Abstract
Scholars including religious scholars hold differing views on the Islamic legitimacy of a political system. Among Sunni Scholars, theories of “brute force”, “nomination”, “inheritance”, and “election” are mostly agreed upon in this regard and Shiite scholars, early and late, believed in three principal and important jurisprudential theories such as "appointment", "election", and "consensus" on the matter of Islamic legitimacy for a political system. The question we ask in this paper is what are the differences and rationales for these differing Shiite scholarly perspectives and in fact what do each of these theories see as the basis for the legitimacy of a government in Islam, and why? In this research, we examine and clarify these three important theories in terms of their jurisprudential arguments.

writer:

• Sayyed Mohammad Reza Marandi

Assistant Professor , depatment of political jurisprodent. shahid beheshti university