Between Tradition and Invention of Trad？t？on: The Place of Khome？n？’s Regime in Political Culture of Iran

The purpose of this study has been to describe the place of Iran Islamic Revolution and the regime found afterward within the political culture of Iran and Shiism. For this purpose the characteristics of the relation between the political culture and Khomeini’s ideology has been revealed by bringing the social components of the revolution and the political practices of the Islamic Republic up for discussion. Hereunder these have been aimed to demonstrate that the political thought of Khomeini was not a unique interpretation of political Shiism and it was a pragmatic body in the point of both the social consent and the practices of political actors. Starting from this point of view the historical foundations of the regime have been investigated. This investigation consists of a chapter which analyzes where and how did the religious institution begin to improve its political legitimacy against the secular political authority and of another chapter which analyzes the legitimacy crisis involved by the secular political authorities of Iran in the modern age and their capacities to find solutions for that. As a result it as put forward that on the field where the secular political authority couldn’t continue its patrimonial legitimacy in the process of political modernization of Iran the religious institution solved the mentioned legitimacy crisis by means of inventing tradition