Legitimacy crisis

The traditional approach to international law granted states an absolute monopoly in making international law and it discussed the rights and powers of states as a sole subject of international law. However, the proliferation of norms made by non-state actors raises questions with regard to the status of the actors as well as the legitimacy of the norms in the international fora, while it also challenges the state-centric orientation of international law. In consideration of the foregoing, customary law—whichwas traditionally comprised of two statebased elements of practice and opinio juris, as an important source of international law—has been faced with a strand of inquiry: can non-state actors generate international customs? Through 1) an in-depth survey of scholarly arguments regarding law-making in certain circumstances that could also belong to private parties; and 2) a close examination of the lex mercatoria as an example of existing international customs developed by non-state actors, this article tries to clarify a) the legitimacy crisis of a more inclusive approach to international law and b) proposes opportunities whereby non-state actors could participate in the law-making process.

The present study aims to explore and explain the collapse of Pahlavi II using the destabilizing state theory. The reasons for the collapse of the said government have been analyzed based on historical documents and the destabilizing state theory. The paper portrays the subject by scrutinizing historical reasons and evidence found in credible sources. The fundamental issue is the identification of factors and explaining their role in the collapse. The indicators of the destabilizing state theory have been used to examine and explain various historical data. This research, based on library sources, memoirs, documents, and newspapers, and a descriptive-analytical qualitative method, aims to answer the question of ‘Which variables involved in the collapse of the Pahlavi II government are based on the destabilizing state theory and why did the Pahlavi government collapse?’ The results indicated that the variables involved in the collapse of the Pahlavi regime include: Legitimacy crisis, inefficiency in providing public services, law evasion accompanied by violence, coercion and suppression, infiltration of the SAVAK security forces, foreign interventions, especially by the United States, demographic pressure, migration from villages to cities and particularly to Tehran, superiority and decisiveness of revolutionary forces, undeveloped economic structure, rapid and erratic economic growth, and financial corruption.