In this paper, I pursue a dialogue between John Dryzek and Robert E. Goodin’s positions on deliberative democracy’s ‘problem of economy’ with an eye toward a synthesis that could lead us toward a conception of deliberation that counters the threat to legitimacy posed by this problem. By sketching a view that makes the two accounts more consonant by casting discourses as intersubjectively constituted, with deliberation as the contestation of intersubjectively constituted discourses in the public sphere, we ought to be (...) able to describe democratic legitimacy as being linked to the epistemic quality of deliberation while not succumbing to the problem of economy. This would thereby maintain deliberative democracy’s critical edge and feasibility and legitimize the deliberative democratic model as a standpoint to critically evaluate social relations and collective decisions, such that our politics can be rendered more just. (shrink)

In this paper, I pursue a dialogue between John Dryzek and Robert E. Goodin’s positions on deliberative democracy’s ‘problem of economy’ with an eye toward a synthesis that could lead us toward a conception of deliberation that counters the threat to legitimacy posed by this problem. By sketching a view that makes the two accounts more consonant by casting discourses as intersubjectively constituted, with deliberation as the contestation of intersubjectively constituted discourses in the public sphere, we ought to be (...) able to describe democratic legitimacy as being linked to the epistemic quality of deliberation while not succumbing to the problem of economy. This would thereby maintain deliberative democracy’s critical edge and feasibility and legitimize the deliberative democratic model as a standpoint to critically evaluate social relations and collective decisions, such that our politics can be rendered more just. (shrink)

Let justice be a feature of the social order imposed by a state and legitimacy a feature of how it is imposed: one that makes the imposition acceptable. This article argues that, so understood, legitimacy is quite a distinct concern from justice; that the core concern is with showing how state coercion is consistent with people’s being free citizens; that this does not require showing that the state exists by consensus or contract; that the best hope of satisfying (...) the concern lies with arguing that state coercion need not be dominating; and that this is possible only within the republican theory that identifies freedom with the absence of domination, not interference. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on state legitimacy has recently seen a significant conceptual revision. Several philosophers have argued that the state's right to rule is better characterized not as a claim right to obedience, but as a power right. There have been few attempts to show that traditional justifications for the claim right might also be used to justify a power right, and there have been no such attempts involving the principle of fair play, which is widely regarded as the (...) most promising basis for a claim right to obedience. William Edmundson argues that the principle of fair play cannot generate power rights, and so any attempt at a fair play account of legitimacy must fail. I explain how fair play could generate a power right, owing to its stipulation that the rules of a cooperative scheme specify the form of participants' repayment. (shrink)

Moral legitimacy entails intrinsic value and helps executives convince firm’s stakeholders and the general public of the ethical acceptability of an institution or its activities or projects. Social license to operate is the social approval of those affected by a certain business activity, and it is receiving increasing attention, especially in the context of controversial projects such as mining and public works. Moral legitimacy provides ethical support to SLO. Drawing from the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition and taking substantive justice and (...) the common good of society as the key references, this paper applies the Triple Font of Morality Theory and proposes four criteria which serve to evaluate moral legitimacy: contribution of the project or activity to the common good in a better way than other alternatives, morality of the means and procedures employed, ethical evaluation of the situation including stakeholder concerns and needs, and ethical evaluation of reasonably foreseeable consequences associated with the project and how to minimize possible damage or risks, and balance foreseeable negative consequences and benefits. The application of these criteria is illustrated through a project, presented as a case study, which certainly involved controversy and problems with SLO. The project was the construction of a rail tunnel for a high-speed train near the foundations of the Sagrada Familia, the well-known monumental church in Barcelona, Spain. (shrink)

Despite being fundamental to democracy, the normative concept of the people, i.e. the demos, is highly unclear. This article clarifies the legitimacy of the demos’ boundaries by structuring the debate into three strains of justification: first, normative membership principles; second, its democratic functionality and the necessity of cohesion for this essential function; and third, a procedural understanding of the demos. It will be shown that normative principles can only justify its expansion towards the ideal of an unbounded demos. On (...) the other hand, the democratic function of the demos can be understood as a criterion for its restriction. This, however, is only possible on the basis of an existing polity and not for the initial constitution of the demos. Consequently, a legitimate demos has to take both inclusionary and exclusionary tendencies into account. These tendencies need to be weighed against each other in the democratic process, which leads to a fundamentally procedural understanding of the legitimacy of the demos. (shrink)

Physicians commonly recommend ?placebo treatments?, which are not believed to have specific efficacy for the patient's condition. Motivations for placebo treatments include complying with patient expectations and promoting a placebo effect. In this article, we focus on two key empirical questions that must be addressed in order to assess the ethical legitimacy of placebo treatments in clinical practice: 1) do placebo treatments have the potential to produce clinically significant benefit? and 2) can placebo treatments be effective in promoting a (...) therapeutic placebo response without the use of deception? We examine evidence from clinical trials and laboratory experiments bearing on these two questions. The conclusion is reached that based on currently available evidence, it is premature to judge whether placebo treatments are ethically justifiable, with the possible exception of acupuncture for pain relief. (shrink)

There is a worry about the intellectual legitimacy of philosophy. Although the sciences have a progressive history, with later theories largely building on earlier ones, and a tremendous amount of agreement within the scientific community about the approximate truth of current theory, philosophy is different. We do not see a progressive history of philosophical theorizing, and there is little agreement within the philosophical community about which theories are even roughly correct. This not only encourages a certain skepticism about the (...) possibility of philosophical knowledge, but a real question about whether the activity of philosophical theorizing is intellectually legitimate. It is argued here that there are features of a naturalistic methodology in philosophy which have the resources to respond to these concerns. (shrink)

At the center of Rawls’s work post-1980 is the question of how legitimate coercive state action is possible in a liberal democracy under conditions of reasonable disagreement. And at the heart of Rawls’s answer to this question is his liberal principle of legitimacy. In this paper I argue that once we attend carefully to the depth and range of reasonable disagreement, Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy turns out to be either wildly utopian or simply toothless, depending on how (...) one reads the ideal of reciprocity it is meant to embody. To remedy this defect in Rawls’s theory, I␣undertake to develop the outlines of a democratic conception of legitimacy, drawing first on Rawls’s generic conception of legitimacy in The Law of Peoples and second on a revised understanding of reciprocity between free and equal citizens. On this revised understanding, what free and equal citizens owe one another is not reciprocity in judgment, but reciprocity of interests. (shrink)

In this article, I engage with Derrida’s deconstructive reading of theories of performativity in order to analyse Max Weber’s sovereignty–legitimacy paradigm. First, I highlight an essential articulation between legitimacy and sovereign ipseity (understood, beyond the sole example of State sovereignty, as the autopositioned power-to-be-oneself). Second, I identify a more originary force of legitimation, which remains foreign to the order of performative ipseity because it is the condition for both its position and its deconstruction. This suggests an essential fallibility (...) of the performative, which implies a ‘mystical’ legitimacy and a paradoxical, divisible and self-differential representation of sovereignty. The structural differentiality of legitimacy and sovereignty signifies an irreducible coloniality of law and language, but also suggests the possibility of an unconditional resistance located in the radical interpretability of the law, beyond determined representations of powers, dominations, sovereignties or resistances. This reflection is triggered by a reading of Cynthia Weber’s theory of ‘performative states’, describing sovereignty under the form of an impossible ontology, which leads me to elaborate the notion of legitimation-to-come as a non-ontological ‘concept’: this notion of unconditional legitimacy, beyond sovereignty, binds beliefs and phantasms to the unpresentable force of the event. Pursuing the efforts of scholars such as Rob Walker and Cynthia Weber, I sketch the implications of this archi-performative legitimacy regarding the methodological protocols of International Relations and sociology, in view of elucidating the persistent ontological presuppositions of these disciplines. (shrink)

This Article explores the unacknowledged impact of the scientific provenance of modern law. Justice, I argue, is threatened by social scientific thinking that subordinates justice to legitimacy, efficiency, and fairness. In doing so, I show that the power of the asserted connection between positive law and democracy depends upon a dangerous blurring of the distinction between justice and legitimacy. Finally, I offer an alternative genealogy of positive law that shows modern law to have been transformed into a science. (...) My hope is that by pointing to the threatened loss of justice as an ideal, my work can help to hold open the possibility that law reclaim its foundation in the art of judgment instead of the science of law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Legitimacy, Performance, and Political Realism:Response to Ben CrossJiwei Ci (bio)Ben Cross raises important issues in his article and provides a much appreciated occasion for me to join the discussion. He targets his trenchant critique at what he calls Weberian sources of legitimacy, treating my view as a distinctive variation on the Weberian account. I am not sure that the issues on which we differ are most economically (...) framed by drawing Weber so prominently into the debate. Since Cross has already framed the issues in this way, however, I think I can best contribute to the exchange by accepting his terms of reference wherever appropriate and trying to work as fruitfully as possible within them. I will respectfully not take up any of the issues raised in the fourth section of the article, because Cross's use of the notion of civic agency there is so far removed from mine as to leave little room for productive engagement.As Cross notes, Weber identifies three distinct sources of legitimacy (or three types of authority): legality, the traditional, and the charismatic. This, however, is only a typology of specific sources and an incomplete one at that, for it does not cover the two sources that I happen to find most relevant in Democracy in China.1 The teleological legitimacy much discussed in chapter 1 of my book does not come under any of Weber's ideal types and seems to constitute another, distinct ideal type. Nor is the democratic legitimacy based on popular sovereignty that is proposed in chapter 3 as an alternative to teleological legitimacy quite the same as legal authority. It is thus easy to see that—and why—I do not avail myself of what Cross calls the Weberian sources of legitimacy. As a matter of fact, I do not [End Page 149] regard Weber's tripartite classification, regardless of whether it is exhaustive, as the conceptual core of his idea of legitimacy.Cross moves closer to that core when he notes the difference between the type of motive (i.e., non-expedient) that the three Weberian sources of legitimacy are supposed to have in common and the motive of pure expediency. This difference is important because, as Weber puts it in a well-known statement quoted by Cross, "Purely material interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of solidarity between the chief and his administrative staff result, in this as in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation." Based on Weber's concern with the lack of stability characteristic of relations of pure expediency, Cross is then able to speak of a "Weber-inspired rejection of performance legitimacy." This conclusion, if not exactly mistaken, is nevertheless reached without adequately bringing out the issues involved.Take a close look at the passage in Economy and Society from which the above quote is taken:Purely material interests and calculations of advantages as the basis of solidarity between the chief and his administrative staff result, in this as in other connexions, in a relatively unstable situation. Normally other elements, affectual and ideal, supplement such interests. In certain exceptional cases the former alone may be decisive. In everyday life these relationships, like others, are governed by custom and material calculation of advantage. But custom, personal advantage, and purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity do not form a sufficiently reliable basis for a given domination. In addition there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy.2Here it becomes clear that Weber, even in emphasizing the indispensable role of belief in legitimacy, argues his case much more cautiously and subtly than Cross gives one to understand. To begin with we see Weber take the trouble to stress "purely." We then find three qualifications in a row before Weber allows himself to conclude, as an empirical observation, that "custom, personal advantage, purely affectual or ideal motives of solidarity, do not form a sufficiently reliable basis for a given domination," from which he is apparently compelled to draw the inference that "there is normally a further element, the belief in legitimacy." In an earlier section of Economy and Society Weber makes similar allowances for the empirical proximity of motives... (shrink)

The task of discovering the conditions of legitimacy is traditionally conceived as that of finding a way to justify a political system to everyone who is required to live under it. If the justification is successful, no one will have grounds for moral complaint about the way it takes into account and weighs his interests and point of view. Nagel uses Kant's unanimity criterion in relation to political institutions and to the individual lives of their members; he maintains that (...) unanimity could be achieved by us in many respects as we are, provided that we are also reasonable and committed within reason to modifying our claims, requirements, and motives in a direction that makes a common framework of justification possible. (shrink)

Economic theories of democratic legitimacy have criticized deliberative accounts of democratic legitimacy on the grounds that they do not represent a practical possibility and that they create conditions that make actual democracies worse. It is not simply that they represent the wrong ideal. Rather, they are too idealistic – failing to show proper regard for the cognitive and moral limitations of persons and the depth of disagreement in democratic society. This article aims to show that the minimalist (...) criterion of democratic legitimacy is self-defeating and that even if there are minimal cognitive, moral, and social requirements for the possibility of practicable deliberative democracy, these limitations do not necessarily impose insuperable barriers for democratic deliberation as the normative basis of democratic legitimacy. Thus, the limiting facts do not dictate the structure of appropriate normative models of democracy in the way minimalists have supposed. (shrink)

This essay examines the political-philosophical legitimacy of critical thinking as an aim of compulsory education. Although critical thinking is given an important role in Norwegian educational policy, the right to demand a critical attitude from all citizens has been extensively debated in political and pedagogical philosophy the last two decades. This debate stems in large part from the late work of John Rawls. In this essay, I start by stating the case for critical thinking as an educational aim, focusing (...) on democratic education. Next, I give an account of the challenge that Rawls’ later philosophy puts to education for critical thinking. Finally, I discuss some possible ways of responding to the Rawls. The upshot will be that some aspects of critical thinking can and must be defended as politically legitimate. However, any such defence must include a reply to the Rawlsian argument – if not, it will simply be naïve. In that sense, much Norwegian educational policy has been naïve. (shrink)

If medical complicity is understood as compliance with a directive to act against the professional's best medical judgment, the question arises whether it can ever be justified. This paper will trace the contours of what would legitimate a directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment (and in possible contravention of her oath) using Joseph Raz's service conception of authority. The service conception is useful for basing the legitimacy of authoritative directives on the ability of the putative authority (...) to enable subjects to comply better with reasons that already apply to them. Hence, the service conception bases the legitimacy of practical authority on a certain kind of greater knowledge or expertise. This helps to focus the conundrum regarding complicity on the clash of expertise between the medical expert and the governing body tasked with coordinating behaviour and otherwise devising rules for the social good. The ethical dilemma presented by a hypothetically legitimate directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment also serves to highlight the moral dimension of one's duty to obey a legitimate authority. (shrink)

Matthew Lindauer, Peter Higgins, Jiewuh Song, and Ana Tanasoca have engaged thoughtfully with the work I present in _Justice for People on the Move_. I am very grateful for their insightful comments, critical remarks, observations about areas of agreement, useful suggestions for progressing important conversations, and invitations to elaborate on core issues. I cannot possibly discuss all the important issues they cover here, but in this response essay I address some of their most prominent concerns in the next four sections. (...) The first section engages with Matthew Lindauer’s critique. It covers the normative grounding for my account and its relationship with the human rights practice that I support. In the second section I discuss why legitimacy has such a prominent role in my argument, thus addressing Peter Higgins’s commentary. The third section reviews some points about the human rights practice. These clarifications help address Jiewuh Song’s and Ana Tanasoca’s queries about practical implications and strengthening implementation avenues. In the final section I cover how my contribution requirements function in judging state legitimacy. Drawing on this discussion I address points from Song’s and Tanasoca’s papers, such as epistemic challenges in assessing contributions to the legitimacy of the state system. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is a virtue of political institutions and of the decisions—about laws, policies, and candidates for political office—made within them. This entry will survey the main answers that have been given to the following questions. First, how should legitimacy be defined? Is it primarily a descriptive or a normative concept? If legitimacy is understood normatively, what does it entail? Some associate legitimacy with the justification of coercive power and with the creation of political authority. Others (...) associate it with the justification, or at least the sanctioning, of existing political authority. Authority stands for a right to rule—a right to issue commands and, possibly, to enforce these commands using coercive power. An additional question is whether legitimate political authority is understood to entail political obligations or not. Most people probably think it does. But some think that the moral obligation to obey political authority can be separated from an account of legitimate authority, or at least that such obligations arise only if further conditions hold. (shrink)

This article explores the prospects for developing a realist political theory via an analysis of the work of Bernard Williams. It begins by setting out Williams’s theory of political realism and placing it in the wider context of a realist challenge in the literature that rightly identifies several deficiencies in the liberal view of politics and legitimacy. The central argument of the article is, however, that Williams’s political realism shares common features with liberal theory, including familiar normative concerns and (...) a consensus view of the political and political legitimacy, which results in it replicating rather than overcoming the weaknesses that other realists have recognized in liberalism, thereby making it vulnerable to the same criticisms. Though these are taken to be significant problems for Williams’s theory, the purpose of making this argument is not to undermine the prospects for a realist political theory but to indicate obstacles and difficulties that any compelling account will need to address. (shrink)

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) has been called the German Rousseau. Yet while Rousseau is recognized as a political thinker, Herder is not. This book explores each thinker's ideas--on nature and culture, selfhood and mutuality, paternalism, freedom, and autonomy--and compares their conceptions of legitimate statehood. Arguing that the crux of political legitimacy for both men was the possibility of "extended selfhood," Barnard shows that Herder, like Rousseau, profoundly altered human self-understandings, thus influencing modes of justifying political allegiance.

The financial crisis which recently occurred is the epiphenomenon of a structural crisis of advanced capitalism. Although it referred to a very different context the diagnosis made by Habermas in his work Legitimationsprobleme des Spätkapitalismus , published in 1973, remains a very useful key in order to understand the irreducibility of social policy and the way the post-Fordist capitalism assumes the mediation between the economic and the social sphere — that is, how it deals with both the deficit of rationality (...) and the deficit of legitimacy. Instead of being the political expression of social relations the neo-liberal system decouples labour and capital and, governed by financial markets, disconnects the social and the political rights and undermines the possibility of a true foundation of citizenship. In other words, the ‘refeudalization’ Habermas had reported as early as in Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (1962) remains quite topical. (shrink)

The classical formulation of libertarianism seems to be incompatible with the requirements of political legitimacy. Some libertarians have endorsed this result, denying that the state is legitimate. This paper argues, however, that the particular nature of that incompatibility represents a problem for the classical formulation of libertarianism. It is argued that acknowledging the existence of a particular minimal form of positive rights might overcome the problem in question. It is further argued that acknowledgment of such positive rights would seem (...) to provide a more adequate normative ground for making sense of some central libertarian insights and concerns. (shrink)

In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by bringing together philosophy (political theory) and political science. This approach led to (...) a series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance (as is often the case in philosophy) to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism (primary), evaluative, propositional (first or secondary order) and pluralist political criticism. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1199-1225, November 2022. In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by (...) bringing together philosophy and political science. This approach led to a series of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism, evaluative, propositional and pluralist political criticism. (shrink)

In political science, the theme of critical citizenship is often interpreted negatively and understood to express distrust. However, criticism can be motivated by positive aspirations towards democracy and how to improve it. In order to test this idea, we asked respondents to the Democracy and citizenship survey to rank how the features of different types of democratic legitimacy appealed to them. The module adopted an innovative methodology by bringing together philosophy and political science. This approach led to a series (...) of results that tempered and questioned the more prevalent pessimistic understandings of critical citizenship. Furthermore, this article looks closely at controversy surrounding the meaning ascribed to criticism and discusses the presuppositions made by many political sociology studies and their differing hypotheses on critical citizenship. It shows that the very definition of criticism remains unclear and proposes a ‘critical understanding of criticism’ adopting a meta-critical stance to better identify four possible types of criticism: reactive criticism, evaluative, propositional and pluralist political criticism. (shrink)

Suppose we have a persistent disagreement about a particular set of policy options, not because of an underlying moral disagreement, or a mere conflict of interest, but rather because we disagree about a crucial non-normative factual assumption underlying the justification of the policy choices. The main question in the paper is what political legitimacy requires in such cases, or indeed whether there are defensible answers to that question. The problem of political legitimacy in fact-dependent policy disagreements has received (...) almost no attention in political philosophy, which has focused mostly on value disagreements and proposed theories of legitimate coercive legislation in valuedependent disagreements. The paper presents an argument showing that under certain plausible assumptions regarding legitimacy, there are serious difficulties in identifying legitimate choices in fact-dependent policy disagreements. This may be unsurprising to political philosophers preoccupied with value-based disagreements, perhaps because it has been assumed that legitimacy-related concerns are irrelevant to fact-dependent policy disagreements. The paper argues that this response is premature. If we should care about legitimacy et al.l, then it is by no means clear why we should ignore issues of legitimacy in policy-disputes that depend on factual disagreements. The paper ends by defining a set of possibilities that merit further exploration in search of a theory of legitimacy in fact-dependent policy disagreements. (shrink)

The term “judicial restraint,” applied to courts engaged in judicial constitutional review, may refer to any one or more of three possible postures of such courts, which we here will distinguish as “quiescent,” “tolerant,” and “weak-form.” A quiescent court deploys its powers sparingly, strictly limiting the agenda of social disputes on which it will pronounce in the constitution’s name. A tolerant court confirms as valid laws whose constitutional compatibility it finds to be reasonable sustainable, even though it independently would conclude (...) to the contrary. A weak-form court acts on the understanding that its pronouncements on matters constitutional will be duly open to considered rejection by other political agencies. Theory commonly tends to treat the question of judicial restraint as turning on a bedrock political value of democracy. We may also, however, understand debates over judicial restraint in the light of a different bedrock value, that of political legitimacy. Where democracy is the focal concern, debaters may tend toward conflating into one measure the three dimensions of judicial restraint. A focus on legitimacy rather tends toward a dis-bundling of the three dimensions, thus complicating the choices while also clarifying the stakes. The political philosophy of John Rawls helps us to see how and why this occurs. (shrink)

This essay examines certain epistemic problems facing administrative states’ efforts to draft efficient regulations for their societies. I argue that a basic feature of the administrative state’s authority, namely its monopoly over the production of legally binding rules for all members of a geographically defined society, creates epistemic problems that impede efficient rule-making. Specifically, the administrative state’s monopoly over the production of legally binding rules prevents multiple public policies from being simultaneously implemented and compared. The resulting singularity of administrative states’ (...) regulatory decisions prevents observation of the counterfactual effects of policies that were possible but which were not implemented. The absence of observable policy counterfactuals frustrates efforts to assess the efficiency of administrative states’ decisions, as it is impossible to determine whether different policies would have generated greater benefits at lower cost than the policy the state implemented. As these epistemic problems are derived from the singularity of administrative states’ decisions, they exist independently of principal agent problems, suboptimal incentives, or the preferences and capabilities of administrative personnel. (shrink)

Some types of solar radiation management (SRM) research are ethically problematic because they expose persons, animals, and ecosystems to significant risks. In our earlier work, we argued for ethical norms for SRM research based on norms for biomedical research. Biomedical researchers may not conduct research on persons without their consent, but universal consent is impractical for SRM research. We argue that instead of requiring universal consent, ethical norms for SRM research require only political legitimacy in decision-making about global SRM (...) trials. Using Allen Buchanan & Robert Keohane's model of global political legitimacy, we examine several existing global institutions as possible analogues for a politically legitimate SRM decision-making body. (shrink)

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal respect demands (...) basic-rights protection and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter. (shrink)

In this paper the author first presents a critical account of some basic views of Habermas' Discourse Philosophy. He points out some difficulties inherent in notions such as valid justification in argumentation theory, in the notion of ideal form of discourses, and in consensus theory of truth. Secondly, he focuses on Habermas' conceptions of validity, acceptance and legitimacy of law from the perspective of neo‐institutionalism. In particular, (i) the author argues that Habermas' definition of legal validity is unclear and (...) unrealistic; (ii) the author stresses the distinction between acceptance and acceptability; (iii) Habermas presupposes harmony between sovereignty and human rights postulates, but the present author takes into account the possibility of conflicts between autonomous popular decisions and human rights which must be resolved by methods of discursive democracy; (iv) criteria for acceptance of law cannot be fixed by a stipulative definition, but are in social discussion; (v) legitimacy is not an objective feature of valid law and presupposes an evaluation based on our political convictions. (shrink)

This paper provides a critique and re-evaluation of the way that ethics is understood and promoted within mainstream Human Resource Management (HRM) discourse. We argue that the ethics located within this discourse focuses on bolstering the relevance of HRM as a key contributor to organizational strategy, enhancing an organization's sense of moral legitimacy and augmenting organizational control over employee behaviour and subjectivity. We question this discourse in that it subordinates the ethics of the employment relationship to managerial prerogative. In (...) response, we suggest a different model of the relationship between ethics and HRM—one that finds the possibility of ethics in the contestation and destabilization of HRM. Such ethics arises through resistance to moral normalization and the constraint of freedom and difference. The contribution of our paper is in theorising the possibilities of a relationship between ethics and HRM that does not place HRM at its centre, as chief intermediary of the ethics of the employment relationship, but rather sees HRM as being a powerful player in a set of what Mouffe calls 'agonistic' socio-ethical relations. (shrink)

In the literature on refugeehood in political theory, there has been a recent turn towards what have been called “state system legitimacy” views. These views derive an account of states’ obligations to refugees from a broader picture of the conditions for international legitimacy. This paper seeks to develop the state system legitimacy view of refugeehood by subjecting the most developed version of it—the account developed by David Owen—to critical scrutiny. We diagnose an ambiguity in Owen’s theory of (...) refugeehood, in the concept of political membership, and unpack the implications of this ambiguity for state system legitimacy views. First, we reconstruct the key aspects of Owen’s account of refugeehood and show how it represents an advance over competing theories. Then we discuss the methodological underpinnings of Owen’s account, showing the constraints and opportunities faced by state system legitimacy views. Next, we raise some problems for the conceptual distinctions that Owen develops between different types of refugee protection: asylum, sanctuary, and refuge. The underlying feature that leads to these problems is an ambiguity in the concept of political membership, which is at the core of Owen’s view of refugeehood. Finally, we distinguish two interpretations of political membership in the institution of refugeehood and chart out some possible ways forward for state system legitimacy views. The critique developed here is a sympathetic one, aimed at the further development of state system legitimacy views. (shrink)

This paper discusses how the general and abstract concept of legitimacy applies to international institutions, using the United Nations Security Council as an example. We argue that the evaluation of the Security Council’s legitimacy requires considering three significant and interrelated aspects: its purpose, competences, and procedural standards. We consider two possible interpretations of the Security Council’s purpose: on the one hand, maintaining peace and security, and, on the other, ensuring broader respect for human rights. Both of these purposes (...) are minimally morally acceptable for legitimacy. Second, we distinguish between three different competences of the UNSC: 1) the decision-making competence, 2) the quasi-legislative competence, and 3) the referral competence. On this basis, we argue that different procedural standards are required to legitimise these competences, which leads to a more differentiated understanding of the Security Council’s legitimacy. While maintaining that the membership structure of the Council is a severe problem for its legitimacy, we suggest other procedural standards that can help to improve its overall legitimacy, which include broad transparency, deliberation, and the revisability of the very terms of accountability themselves. (shrink)

For many contemporary liberal political philosophers the appropriate response to the facts of pluralism is the requirement of public reasonableness, namely that individuals should be able to offer to their fellow citizens reasons for their political actions that can generally be accepted.This article finds wanting two possible arguments for such a requirement: one from a liberal principle of legitimacy and the other from a natural duty of political civility. A respect in which conversational restraint in the face of political (...) agreement involves incivility is sketched.The proceduralist view which commends substantive disagreement within agreement on procedures is briefly outlined, as is the possible role for civic virtue on this view. (shrink)

The recent Science Wars have brought into sharp focus, in a public forum, contentious questions about the authority of science and what counts as properly scientific practice that have long structured archaeological debate. As in the larger debate, localized disputes in archaeology often presuppose a conception of science as a unified enterprise defined by common goals, standards, and research programs; specific forms of inquiry are advocated (or condemned) by claiming afiliation with sciences so conceived. This pattern of argument obscures much (...) that is most creative in archaeological practice. Archaeologists routinely exploit both integrating and fragmenting relations among the sciences, especially in establishing evidential claim. I will argue that the credibility of these claims is a function, not of scientific status acquired by corporate affiliation, but of the substantive trade in tools and techniques, empirical insights, models, and theories that is made possible by local interactions between archaeology and a wide range of other disciplines. There is much more to be gained by developing a rich critical understanding of the interfield relations that make this trade possible than by appealing to generic ideals of science. (shrink)

This book offers a complete rethink of the institutional limits and possibilities of deliberative democracy and legitimacy. Examining several unresolved problems at the core of deliberative democratic theory, this volume will be vital reading for deliberative democratic theorists and public policy makers.

The study of political theology has never been a neutral exercise in excavating the theoretical origins of sovereignty. The political contexts in which questions arise are instructive. In this paper, I argue that the very language of representation and legitimacy articulated for Muslims in the contemporary world may occlude the political challenges that obviate their possibility. Biopolitics, the construction of tradition, the possibility of a ‘philosophical religion’ and the challenge of rationality, and the incompleteness of the critique (...) of political theology make the actuality of a critical and theoretical encounter with representation difficult at best, elusive at worst. (shrink)

There is a little explored tension between the regulations called for by environmentalists and the predominant liberal political theory. The latter says that laws are only legitimate when publicly defensible to all who must follow them and thus does not support the state adoption of particular values. Environmental concerns frequently fall under the category of particular values. I explore ways that liberalism does in fact support environmental regulations as furthering universal rights and justice within and between generations. However, some forms (...) of environmental preservation are clearly government pursuits of particular values. I explore possible liberal justifications of publicly fostering environmental values and conclude by arguing for a deliberative democratic approach. (shrink)

This article aims to make conceptual room for a view about political legitimacy called the power-liability account. The view claims that politi- cal legitimacy is a form of normative power that entails moral liability, but not necessarily a moral claim-right that entails moral duty. The power-liability account supports appealing interpretations of justified civil disobedience in the face of legitimate but unjust law at home and of justified human rights interventions that violate legitimate international law abroad. I argue here (...) only for the conceptual possibility of this view, not for its normative correctness. I believe that the power-liability view indeed is correct, but it often is thought that the view not only is false but also incoherent. Many hold that entailed duty and immunity are built into the meaning of the concept of political legitimacy. My task is to loosen these conceptual strictures. (shrink)

This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace the familiar orientation towards a state of justice with a structurally similar orientation towards a state of legitimacy. As a result, they fail to provide more reliable practical guidance, and wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action towards any state of affairs, I suggest that a more practically useful approach to political theory (...) would directly address judgments, by comparing the concrete possibilities for action faced by real political actors. (shrink)

유교의 화이지변과 왕도사상을 핵심으로 하는 ‘천하질서’ 담론은 사실상 ‘지배의 정당성’의 문제이기도 하다. 중국 모델이 아직 그 형체를 분명히 드러내지 않은 상황에서 ‘천하질서’가 중국에서 뜨거운 담론이 되고 있는 것은 이것이 사실상 ‘지배의 정당성’이라는 문제와 밀접하게 관련이 있기 때문이다. 그렇다면 여기서 ‘지배의 정당성’을 어떻게 이해해야 하는가. 21세기라는 현시점에서 ‘지배의 정당성’이란 결국 유교의 보편성의 재구성 속에서 분열이 아닌 통합의 제국적 메카니즘을 확보하는 것이다.BR이 글은 ‘대륙신유가’라는 학문집단이 ‘신캉유웨이주의’를 매개로 하여 시도하는 천하질서와 유교적 보편주의의 재구성의 가능성을 타진하고자 하는 기초적 작업이다. 그 초점은 두가지이다. 하나는 현실적인 (...) 문제로, 이들이 캉유웨이가 문제로 삼았던 중국강역의 보전과 ‘문명중국’의 회복이라는 문제에서 그 정당화전략을 설득력 있게 짜고 있는가이다. 동중서(董仲舒)는 천하사상에 의한 ‘지배의 정당성’ 탄생의 사이클을 완성함으로써 유교를 내용으로 하는 제국의 통치원리를 탄생시켰다. 동중서가 유교를 내용으로 하는 제국의 통치원리를 완성한 이후 유교는 종족보다는 보편의 계기로 받아들여졌다. 유교는 이후 종족보다는 국가(제국)에 내속되었다. “중국에서 ‘지배의 정당성’은 지배자의 민족적 출신으로 판단하는 것이 아니고 ‘대일통’을 실현한 왕조야말로 ‘정통’의 중화왕조라고 하는 사고방식은 이 때부터 보편화되었다. 모든 중화왕조가 목숨을 걸고 제국적 구조를 구축하여 중화제국으로 변신하려 노력한 이유도 천하사상 즉 ‘대일통’의 사상의 틀로 자신의 정당성이 확보될 수 있었기 때문이다. 캉유웨이가 100년 전에 고민한 이 문제는 지금의 중국에도 그대로 존재한다. 그러나 이 문제는 주변에 대한 차별관계의 청산, 대등한 협력 관계의 구축이라는 21세기적 발상의 전환 없이는 실현 불가능하다.BR다른 하나는 규범적 문제로, 천하질서와 유교적 보편주의의 재구성이라는 작업을 통해 ‘성찰적 유학’을 보여줄 수 있는가의 여부이다. ‘성찰적 유학’의 두가지 조건은 타자성과 윤리성이다. 이두 조건이 결여된 신유학 논의는 ‘봉건’으로의 자기회귀라는 비난을 받을 수 있으며 이 형태로는 중국의 안과 밖을 설득시킬 수가 없다. 더 나아가 이들의 기획은 또 다른 ‘중국중심주의’를 꽤하려는 것이라는 오해를 피할 수 없다. 중국의 유학이 재보편화하기 위해서는 서양이라는 타향을 표류하고 난 이후 다시 고향에 돌아온 상태에서 이제 다시금 ‘나는 누구인가’, ‘나의 가치는 어디에 있는가’라는 질문을 낯설게 해야 한다. 그랬을 때 자기에 대한 진정한 객관화과정이 시작될 수 있으며 자기상대화를 통한 타자성을 확보할 수 있다. 이 과정을 거쳐야만 ‘성찰적 유학’이라 칭할 수 있으며 ‘지속가능성’을 말할 수 있다. 이를 기준으로 본다면 ‘대륙신유가’의 ‘신캉유웨이주의’를 통한 천하질서와 유교적 보편주의의 재구성의 가능성은 지켜봐야 하겠지만 그렇게 높다고 할 수 없다. 현실적 문제든 규범적 문제든 재구성의 가능성이 높지 않다면 그것은 아마 20세기를 거친 21세기적 인식의 부재에서 비롯된 것일 가능성이 높다. (shrink)

It has been traditional in political philosophy to take internal and external state legitimacy as resting on distinct criteria. However, this is a view that is currently being challenged. Assuming that internal and external legitimacy rely on the same criterion, a possible worry that arises is that an unacceptable amount of intervention will necessarily become justifiable. I argue that such worries are not significant and that they do not rule out this alternative to the traditional view.

There is a little explored tension between the regulations called for by environmentalists and the predominant liberal political theory. The latter says that laws are only legitimate when publicly defensible to all who must follow them and thus does not support the state adoption of particular values. Environmental concerns frequently fall under the category of particular values. I explore ways that liberalism does in fact support environmental regulations as furthering universal rights and justice within and between generations. However, some forms (...) of environmental preservation are clearly government pursuits of particular values. I explore possible liberal justifications of publicly fostering environmental values and conclude by arguing for a deliberative democratic approach. (shrink)

Three main motivations can explain compliance with social norms: fear of peer punishment, the desire for others' esteem and the desire to meet others' expectations. Though all play a role, only the desire to meet others' expectations can sustain compliance when neither public nor private monitoring is possible. Theoretical models have shown that such desire can indeed sustain social norms, but empirical evidence is lacking. Moreover it is unclear whether this desire ranges over others' “empirical” or “normative” expectations. We propose (...) a new experimental design to isolate this motivation and to investigate what kind of expectations people are inclined to meet. Results indicate that, when nobody can assign either material or immaterial sanctions, the perceived legitimacy of others' normative expectations can motivate a significant number of people to comply with costly social norms. (shrink)

This paper attempts to be a contribution to the epistemological project of explaining complex conceptual structures departing from more basic ones. The central thesis of the paper is that there are what I call “functionally structured concepts”, these are non-harmonic concepts in Dummett’s sense that might be legitimized if there is a function that justifies the tie between the inferential connection the concept allows us to trace. Proving this requires enhancing the russellian existential analysis of definite descriptions to apply to (...) functions and using this in proving the legitimacy of such concepts. The utility of the proposal is shown for the case of thick ethical terms and an attempt is made to use it in explaining the development of natural numbers. This last move could allow us to go one step lower in explaining the genesis of natural numbers while maintaining the notion of abstract numbers as higher order entities. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The authors of this article aim to reveal how motivation and legitimacy ensure the normativity of the structuring and genesis of multiple social identity. _Theoretical basis._ Social constructivism was chosen as a research methodology. It reveals social identity as an identity constructed by its bearer on the basis of ready-made versions of social identity proposed by social groups and society. Social circles, identified by Georg Simmel, unite representatives of different social groups into a wider oneness, which can be (...) interpreted as a multiple social identity, and the motivation for its formation can be identified on the basis of Weber’s concept of legitimacy. _Originality._ Identifying the structure and genesis of a multiple social identity creates prerequisites for establishing its normative foundations, as well as for a specific analysis of the procedures for achieving its motivation and legitimacy. Georg Simmel’s concept of social virtues promotes consideration of the basic virtues of an individual as those that enable one’s to be a member of various social groups in which these virtues are manifested. _Conclusions._ The social virtues present in the social identities that are part of a multiple social identity determine not only the social status of these individuals in these social groups but also the ranking and normative significance of these groups for this individual. If the observance of virtues in a certain social group causes a higher motivation of an individual’s behavior, then this group acquires a higher legitimacy for her/him. Using the example of virtues, it is possible to search for other possible grounds for the formation of multiple social identity. Such grounds are primarily other characteristics of key social practices that support different social groups. (shrink)

A standard view in legal and political theory is that, to a first approximation, (1) we should aim to bring about the most legitimate institutions possible to solve the problems that should be solved at the level of politics, and (2) individual people are required to follow the directives of legitimate institutions, at least insofar as those institutions have the authority to issue those directives, and insofar as other considerations are nearly equal.1 On this standard view, the philosophical analysis of (...) institutional legitimacy can appear to be of the utmost importance because it can seem to answer the most important questions about what we should actually do in the realm of law and politics, and because it may also seem to serve as the crucial bridge between ideal and nonideal theory, at least if institutional legitimacy is analyzed as it often is as a matter of doing well enough along dimensions that are familiar from ideal APA NEWSLETTER | PHILOSOPHY AND LAW theory (e.g., ideal justice, universal consent, respecting basic rights, social welfare maximization, and so on). In what follows I identify a number of possible counterexamples to this standard view, which suggest that there may be no straightforward connection between institutional legitimacy and facts about what reasons, rights, and duties we actually have, and what institutions we should actually try to bring about, contrary to what the standard view assumes. (shrink)

This essay deals with two seventeenth-century intellectuals, the Aristotelian philosopher at Padua, Cesare Cremonini, and the Jesuit controversist, Robert Bellarmine. In the years of the cosmological affair of 1616, both defended their cosmological conceptions by relying on the principle of authority. However, they embraced different sources of legitimation in matters of natural philosophy. While the Padua professor stick to (what he considered to be) the letter of Aristotle, basically a secular interpretation of his world conception, Cardinal and Inquisitor Bellarmine understood (...) the cosmos against a theological background. In particular, Bellarmine subordinated natural philosophy to exegesis and the authority of the Scriptures, and this allowed him to depart from Aristotle to some extent (for instance on the fluidity and possibly the corruptibility of the heavens). Yet, the two thinkers also shared the criticism of the major astronomical novelty of their time, namely the planetary system of Copernicus and his followers. But their objections rested on different worldviews and authorities (Aristotle and the Scriptures, respectively). Cremonini also supported a vision of celestial animation which was received with much preoccupation by religious authorities as they feared that his views might revive forms of astral worshipping. This essay discusses the manner in which Cremonini and Bellarmine received geocentrism and cosmology in very different, even opposite, manners, especially concerning the relation between natural philosophy and theology, and the reconcilability of cosmology with the Scriptures. (shrink)