Political legitimacy is one of the fundamental notions in contemporary political theorizing. To explain this notion, a set of views, influenced by Weber, put emphasis on the role of political beliefs of the citizens. Yet, recent academic enterprises refer to the political agents, focusing on their actions. This article studies Iranians’ socio-economic conditions in 1990’s, and reveals the setting of the emergence of the reformism, with regard to the notion of legitimacy. Along this line, the strategy of the reformists as the political agents is examined and their weaknesses and strengths as well as the reason of their failure are discussed.
