his study investigates the relationship between the people and the state in the political thought of Muḥammad Bāqir al-Sadr. The problem of governance - specifically the balance between popular participation and leadership in macro-level decision-making - has long preoccupied both Western and Eastern political theorists. With the emergence of Islam as a religion engaged in governance, Muslim scholars faced a distinct challenge: how to define the respective roles of the people and the leader in an Islamic polity, particularly in the absence of an infallible authority - namely, the Prophet in Sunnism and the Imam following the onset of the Major Occultation (al-ghaybah al-kubrā) in Shi‘ism. Al-Sadr stands as one of the most influential modern scholars to address this issue. He did not, however, present his political theory in a single, systematic treatise; rather, his views must be reconstructed from arguments dispersed across a range of his writings. From these, four foundational principles may be distilled. The first is divine sovereignty (ḥākimiyyah): human beings are free from subjection to any authority other than God, who alone reserves the right to govern and to designate rulers. The second is general vicegerency (istikhlāf): humanity as a whole is appointed as God’s vicegerent on earth, collectively responsible for establishing a divine order. The third principle defines leadership as primarily supervisory, tasked with guiding the community toward political and moral maturity.