This study aims to extract and present differentiated approaches in policymaking, derived from the prophetic and Ali’s (peace be upon him) governance practices. These approaches provide a framework for managing jurisprudential and social divides, ensuring that policymaking maintains both the foundations of religious legitimacy and jurisprudential authority, while also securing social acceptance and administrative coherence. In other words, the study seeks to propose indigenous governance models capable of simultaneously preserving jurisprudential legitimacy and social acceptance in governmental action when facing tension-prone situations.

The present study is a qualitative, comparative-analytical investigation with an interpretive approach. It considers the governance behaviors and decisions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and Imam Ali (peace be upon him) as the unit of analysis. Using purposive sampling and thematic analysis, jurisprudential and social divides were identified. Subsequently, through comparative analysis and analytical generalization, the extracted management patterns were adapted for application in contemporary policymaking.

The findings indicate that the identified approaches constitute differentiated responses to complex situations arising from jurisprudential and social divides. These approaches include: the Conciliatory Approach (soft model), the Assertive Approach (hard model), and the Instrumental-Explanatory Approach for social divides; the Phased-Integrated Approach for situations with concurrent jurisprudential and social divides; and the Legitimization Approach for situations with purely jurisprudential divides.

The study concludes that governmental action in response to divides is not unidimensional, and that attention to differentiated and targeted approaches enables the simultaneous management of religious legitimacy and social acceptance, without allowing one type of divide to be sacrificed for another.