Ma`rifat Siyasi

Political sociology, as the center of functional rationality in political science, is the foundation for realizing desirable governance. The incompatibility of prevailing paradigms of this knowledge with the problems and phenomena of Iranian society in both theory and practice necessitates the development of a political sociology appropriate to the Islamic Revolution. Adopting a qualitative approach and an analytical-comparative method, the present study analyzes and critiques the epistemological foundations of modern political sociology, formulates the coordinates of a new paradigmatic model based on Islamic social theory and the exigencies of the Iranian context, and outlines its capacities for reconstructing the social governance of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The findings show that, first, the prevailing traditions are founded on modern epistemology and tailored to Western societies; second, religious sources and indigenous capacities enable the formation of an “Islamic tradition of political sociology.” Within this framework, by deriving the fundamental components of a discipline—namely subject, scope, nature, origin, end, and approach—the paradigm of “prudence-oriented political sociology” is presented. This paradigm, based on rationality oriented toward practical wisdom and divine values, offers a coherent framework for reconstructing the social governance of the Islamic Republic of Iran and realizing a new Islamic civilization.