In the Islamic Republic of Iran, sovereignty is the exclusive prerogative of God, who delegates it to an Islamic Jurisprudent, the Supreme Leader. This is clearly spelled out in the Iranian Constitution:

The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in: 1. The One God . . . His exclusive sovereignty and right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands; 2. Divine revelation and its fundamental role in setting forth the laws; 3. The return to God in the Hereafter, and the constructive role of this belief in the course of man's ascent toward God; 4. The justice of God in creation and legislation; 5. Continuous leadership (imamat) and perpetual guidance, and its fundamental role in ensuring the uninterrupted process of the revolution of Islam (Article 2).

[T]he wilayah [guardianship] and leadership of the Ummah [community of the faithful] devolve upon the 'adil muttaqi faqih [the just and pious Islamic Jurisprudent], who is fully aware of the circumstances of his age; courageous, resourceful, and possessed of administrative ability, [he] will assume the responsibilities of this office in accordance with Article 107 (Article 5). The powers of government in the Islamic Republic are vested in the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive powers, functioning under the supervision of the absolute wilayat al-'amr [guardianship] and the leadership of the Ummah (Article 57).

The theocratic nature of the regime requires that all laws and political decisions be in conformity with Islamic precepts and canon law. For that purpose, two constitutional levers are provided: the absolute power of the Supreme Leader and the oversight of the Council of Guardians. The Supreme Leader, through his absolute power and guardianship of the rights of God in the body politic, is above the constitution. He is appointed by the Assembly of Experts, an elective assembly composed of theologians. The Council of Guardians is composed of six theologians designated by the Supreme Leader and six jurists elected by the parliament from a list presented by the head of the judiciary. The latter is also designated by the Supreme Leader.

The Council of Guardians enjoys veto power over all laws and an approbatory and supervisory function with regard to elections to the presidency, the parliament, and the Assembly of Experts. All candidates seeking elective office must first be approved by the Council of Guardians, which must then validate the results of completed elections. Thus the country's elected officials must, in effect, submit to two elections, first that of the Council of Guardians, and second, that of universal suffrage. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a system that has been operated through cooptation from the outset. The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, never submitted his mandate to the people's vote. He was carried to power by popular fervor and by mass demonstrations, but he exercised his trusteeship prior to and irrespective of any popular vote. Before his death, Khomeini himself designated his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, whose nomination was subsequently approved by the Assembly of Experts. Yet the system also incorporates an elective mechanism. It is the interaction between cooptation and elections that makes the Iranian regime unique.

In contrast with modern representative democracies, where elections form the basis of legitimacy and political sovereignty, the Iranian constitution reduces elections to the mere manifestation of public opinion: "In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the affairs of the country must be administered with the support of public opinion expressed by means of elections. . ." (Article 6). The Islamic Republic thus distinguishes itself from totalitarian states, where ideology subsumes public opinion and elections are a political ritual automatically consecrating the only party candidate. The constitutional function of public opinion is a specific feature of the Iranian theocracy.

On the eve of Iran’s 2009 presidential elections, ABF has translated into Persian the Handbook for Domestic Election Observers (published by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights/The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) to provide the Iranian citizens and civil rights advocates with a valuable comparative tool to better understand the function of elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran and its contradistinction with the role of elections within democratic representative regimes.

"The Story of Human Rights" is the first chapter of a book entitled Crime Against Humanity. Its author G. Roberston is a Human Rights Professor and has worked with Amnesty International in South Africa and Vietnam.

While the Iranian people opted for a representative regime and a constitutional monarchy as early as in 1906, it is only in 1959 that the Iranian readership was provided for the first time with the translation of Part two of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan: OF COMMON-WEALTH, which lays the foundation of modern representative government. The translator, Mahmoud Sana’i also translated several chapters of John Locke’s Two treaties of Government as well as John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. In his preface, Mahmoud Sana’i deplores that these founding theories of modern democracy were neglected in Iran.

It is true that at the time he translated these important texts, the new generation of Iranian intellectuals and activists was more interested in Marx, Engels and Lenin than in Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant. A new and complete translation of the Leviathan was done by Hossein Bashiriyeh in 2001 and published by Nashr-e Ney.

John Stuart Mill's famous essay On Liberty was first translated into Persian language by the late Dr. Mahmoud Sana'i in 1959. A later translation of Mill's "on Liberty", by Javad Sheikholeslami, was published in 1996 within 10 years was reprinted five more times. The present Persian version of On Liberty is Dr. Sana'i's 1959 translation and introduction.

The present article, from Encyclopedia Americana, is an analysis of the concept of democracy and the necessary conditions for the existence of a democratic regime.

Its author, Sidney Hooks (1902-1989) was a prominent American philosopher. An expert of Karl Marx's philosophy, he was himself a Marxist and close to the Communist Party. In 1933, Hook broke away form the communist movement. With the Moscow trials and the Great Purges, he started to doubt Marxism. In 1939, he formed the Committee for Cultural Freedom, a short-lived organization that set the stage for his postwar politics by opposing "totalitarianism" on the left and right. By the time of the Cold War, Hook was a prominent anti-Communist, although he continued to consider himself a democratic socialist throughout his life.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, who revised this article, is a political philosopher whose task has been to show the connections between political and ethical convictions. Professor Elshtain who teaches at the University of Chicago writes widely for journals of civic opinion, and lectures, both in the United States and abroad, on whether democracy will prove sufficiently robust and resilient to survive.

The present text in Persian is a short chapter on the history and philosophy of freedom and democracy by an eminent Iranian historian, Fereidun Adamiat. The chapter is from his book The Idea of Liberty and the Origins of the Constitutionalist Movement (in Iran). In writing this chapter, Fereidun Adamiat has widely referred to the work of his professor, the British political scientist, Harold Laski's 1936 book The Rise of Liberalism.