Purpose: In recent decades, the role and participation of people in governance has received serious attention as one of the fundamental pillars of sustainable development and good governance. Studies show that there are two main perspectives in this regard: the first perspective emphasizes the positive results of increasing freedom and people's involvement in governance, while the second perspective believes that moving towards economic and political freedoms, especially in developing countries, requires providing the necessary platforms for people's active participation in governance transformation. In this regard, the idea has been widely accepted that the growth and development of societies depends on popularization and increasing the role of citizens in the political, social and economic arenas, and people-based governance is recognized as one of the clearest examples of global good governance. Governance patterns in different societies differ according to the theoretical approaches governing them. The model of democracy with universal sovereignty, the network model with multilateral participation of actors, and the hierarchical model based on state bureaucracy are among the most important models in this field. However, in many of these models, although efforts have been made to increase the role of the people, in practice, power remains in the hands of the state and the market, and the people's capacities have not been fully realized.

In contrast, in the religious thought of Islam, popular governance is defined in the form of religious democracy, which, unlike pyramidal models, places all components of society at equal levels and in concentric circles around the axis of divine leadership. In this view, the middle circles are present not as intermediaries between the people and the government, but parallel to the political structure and at all levels of governance. This model provides the basis for maximum participation of the people and is organized on the basis of human and social values, rather than individual and group interests.

Accordingly, this article presents the spiral model of middle links with the aim of drawing a model of desirable popular governance. This model, by emphasizing the pivotal role of the people and middle links as the main stakeholders of participation, seeks to provide the basis for seeing people on the stage at all levels of governance.

Methodology: Methodology: To achieve this goal, the present research was conducted with a "descriptive-analytical method" and by collecting the necessary data from "library" sources.



Findings: The research findings show that common governance models such as liberal democracy or network governance, despite their apparent emphasis on participation, in practice, due to hierarchical structures and monopoly of power in government institutions and the market, prevent citizens from playing a maximum role. In contrast, in Islamic thought, the concept of “religious democracy” is proposed, in which the public will finds meaning within the framework of divine leadership and the people are present as the main actors, not tools, at all levels of governance.



Conclusion: Within the framework of participatory models based on Islamic thought, the spiral model of middle links is proposed as a dynamic and evolutionary model that stands in contrast to the common pyramidal and hierarchical structures. This model uses the metaphor of the “snail” which symbolizes gradualness, flexibility and continuity. In the geometry of the snail, the movement begins from a central point and, while maintaining the connection with the core, gradually and without interruption, expands its scope of influence. In the spiral model of popular governance, the “middle links” act as concentric rings that are expanding around the axis of divine leadership and religious ideals. These rings are not placed in a vertical hierarchy, but in a horizontal and networked interaction with each other, centered on a common value system.

The distinctive feature of this model is the combination of axial stability with flexibility. Just as in a snail, each new ring traverses a new space while maintaining a connection to the core, in popular governance, the intermediate rings can develop and play a role in response to the changing needs of society without losing touch with the fixed principles of the Islamic Revolution's discourse. This structure allows for the gradual and increasing participation of the people in all areas of governance at different levels and prevents the monopoly of power in government institutions or the market.