(Islamic) Democracy from the viewpoint of Sheikh Muhammad-Mahdi Shams-od-Din and Doctor Mahdi Haeri Yazdi in comparison with evolutionary democracy (Rousseau and Mill's viewpoints)

With regard to their political thoughts, contemporary Shiite thinkers are classified into three groups. The first group are thinkers who do not consider any specific duties for believers in the public sphere during the occultation period and limit the interference of ulama only to the hesbiyyeh affairs. The second group refers to those who advocate the Wellayat-e Faghih thesis. And, the last group are thinkers who, denying any privileged rights for jurisprudents in the public sphere, believe that the responsibility of the public sphere is given to the people themselves under the condition that the basic regulations of the religion are observed. Sheikh Muhammad-Mahdi Shams-od-Din, the contemporary Lebanese jurisprudent, who put forward his innovative thesis, "the sovereignty of the people over themselves", and Dr. Mahdi Haeri Yazdi, who proposed the innovative thesis, "the agency of private joint owners", are among the prominent thinkers in the third group. Making over the right to sovereign entirely to people, they proposed a model of Islamic state that we may call "elected Islamic state". The most important basics of the model are the legal and political equality of human beings, denial of privileged rights for men, Muslims, Shiites, and jurisprudents in the public sphere, the principle of the responsibility of the governors, and legalism. The model is comparable to the evolutionary model of democracy (Rousseau and Mill), one of the nine models of democracy proposed by David Held.