Background and Problem Statement
The relationship between institutions and cognitive rules is a central issue in contemporary political analysis. Institutional theories usually emphasize formal organizations and governance structures, whereas cognitive institutionalism highlights the role of shared beliefs, values, and mental frameworks in shaping political legitimacy. Political legitimacy depends not only on institutional performance but also on the compatibility between institutional arrangements and dominant societal beliefs. When this compatibility weakens, legitimacy declines and the possibility of institutional transformation increases. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 provides an important case for examining this interaction. During the Pahlavi regime, rapid modernization, political centralization, and state-led secularization transformed the institutional structure of Iran. However, these reforms increasingly conflicted with the prevailing cognitive rules of large segments of society, particularly religious values and traditional norms. As a result, the regime’s political legitimacy gradually eroded, while alternative cognitive frameworks based on Islamic governance, anti-Westernism, and social justice gained wider acceptance. Although many studies have analyzed the Iranian Revolution from economic, sociological, or historical perspectives, fewer have investigated the reciprocal relationship between institutions, cognitive rules, and political legitimacy within a single analytical framework. This study addresses that gap.
Research Objective
The study aims to explain how the interaction between institutions and cognitive rules affected political legitimacy and contributed to the occurrence of the Iranian Revolution. It seeks to identify the mechanisms through which institutional arrangements shape cognitive rules, how cognitive rules influence institutional change, and how the compatibility or incompatibility between them affects political legitimacy.
Methodology
This research employs a qualitative, interpretive, and analytical approach. Data were collected from historical documents, academic books, scholarly articles, constitutional texts, and political records. The analysis is informed by cognitive institutionalism and political legitimacy theory. The study examines four dimensions: the institutional structure of the Pahlavi regime; the cognitive rules promoted by the regime, including secularism, nationalism, and Western-oriented modernization; the emergence of alternative cognitive rules centered on Islamic political thought and revolutionary ideology; and the interaction between institutional transformation and cognitive change before and after the revolution. The qualitative approach allows a comprehensive examination of historical processes, ideological transformations, and institutional evolution.
Findings
The findings show that political legitimacy is strongly influenced by the degree of alignment between institutions and cognitive rules. The institutional structure of the Pahlavi regime was characterized by centralized authority, concentration of power in the monarchy, extensive security institutions, and limited political participation. While these institutions promoted economic modernization, they increasingly failed to accommodate religious values, cultural diversity, and social demands. At the same time, the regime promoted cognitive rules emphasizing secular nationalism, Westernization, and royal authority. These cognitive rules gradually lost social acceptance. Economic inequalities, political repression, perceived corruption, and cultural tensions widened the gap between institutional practices and dominant societal beliefs, leading to a crisis of political legitimacy. During the revolutionary period, new cognitive rules became increasingly influential. Islamic governance, the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, anti-Western discourse, revolutionary activism, and social justice formed an alternative cognitive framework that provided ideological coherence for revolutionary mobilization. Following the revolution, major institutional transformation accompanied cognitive change. The monarchy was abolished and replaced by the Islamic Republic, whose institutional structure integrated religious authority into formal political institutions. Organizations such as the Guardian Council and the Assembly of Experts institutionalized the dominant cognitive rules of the new political order. The study therefore demonstrates that the establishment of the Islamic Republic represented not only a change of regime but also a simultaneous transformation of both institutional structures and cognitive rules.
Conclusion
This research concludes that the interaction between institutions, cognitive rules, and political legitimacy offers a comprehensive explanation for revolutionary political transformation. The collapse of the Pahlavi regime resulted from the growing divergence between its institutional arrangements and the dominant cognitive rules of Iranian society. Conversely, the initial legitimacy of the Islamic Republic was strengthened by the alignment between newly established institutions and widely accepted revolutionary beliefs. The study argues that neither institutions nor cognitive rules alone can fully explain major political transformations. Revolutionary change occurs when existing institutions lose cognitive support while competing cognitive rules become sufficiently institutionalized to provide an alternative basis for political legitimacy. This framework contributes to the broader literature on cognitive institutionalism by showing that political legitimacy is produced through the continuous interaction between institutional arrangements and cognitive rules, and it may be applied to the analysis of regime stability and institutional change in other political contexts.