Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T02:30:42.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Grounds of Political Legitimacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2020

FABIENNE PETER Open the ORCID record for FABIENNE PETER [Opens in a new window]
FABIENNE PETER*
Affiliation:
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The debate over rival conceptions of political legitimacy tends to focus on first-order considerations—for example, on the relative importance of procedural and substantive values. In this essay, I argue that there is an important, but often overlooked, distinction among rival conceptions of political legitimacy that originates at the meta-normative level. This distinction, which cuts across the distinctions drawn at the first-order level, concerns the source of the normativity of political legitimacy, or, as I refer to it here, the grounds of political legitimacy. If we focus on the grounds of political legitimacy, there are three main conceptions of political legitimacy: will-based, belief-based, and fact-based conceptions. I present an objection to each of those main conceptions and defend a hybrid account of the grounds of political legitimacy.

Keywords

Political philosophypolitical legitimacypolitical willauthority
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , Fall 2020 , pp. 372 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I benefited greatly from comments I received on earlier versions of this essay. I particularly thank Elizabeth Edenberg and Michael Hannon for their extensive written comments. I also got very helpful feedback from participants at the Association for Social and Political Philosophy annual conference in Rome, the Nuffield Political Theory workshop at the University of Oxford, the Georgetown political epistemology workshop, a workshop on legitimacy and stability at the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre of the University of Leeds, and the Contemporary Political Theory seminar at the University of Cambridge, and I thank the organizers of these events for inviting me. I am particularly grateful to Duncan Bell, Emanuela Ceva, David Estlund, John Dunn, Alex Guerrero, Duncan Ivison, Christian List, Philip Pettit, Regina Rini, Zofia Stemplowska, Anthony Taylor, Laura Valentini, and Leif Wenar.

References

Buchanan, Allen. (2002) ‘Political Legitimacy and Democracy’. Ethics, 112, 689–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christiano, Thomas. (2008) The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Joshua. (1997a) ‘Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy’. In Bohman, James and Rehg, William (eds.), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 407–37.Google Scholar
Cohen, Joshua. (1997b) ‘Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy’. In Bohman, James and Rehg, William (eds.), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 67–91.Google Scholar
Darwall, Stephen. (2006) The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Darwall, Stephen. (2010) ‘Authority and Reasons: Exclusionary and Second-Personal’. Ethics, 120, 257–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enoch, David. (2014) ‘Authority and Reason-Giving’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 89, 296–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Estlund, David M. (2008) Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gaus, Gerald F. (2011) The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Leslie. (1988) The Authority of the State. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Greene, Amanda. (2016) ‘Consent and Political Legitimacy’. In Sobel, David, Vallentyne, Peter, and Wall, Steven (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy. Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 71–97.Google Scholar
Harman, Elizabeth. (2015) ‘The Irrelevance of Moral Uncertainty’. In Schafer-Landau, Russ (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 53–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolodny, Niko. (2014a) ‘Rule over None I: What Justifies Democracy’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 42, 195–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolodny, Niko. (2014b) ‘Rule over None II: Social Equality and the Justification of Democracy’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 42, 287–336CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larmore, Charles. (2008) The Autonomy of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manin, Bernard. (1987) ‘On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation’. Political Theory, 15, 338–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, Derek. (2011) On What Matters, Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peter, Fabienne. (2016) ‘The Epistemic Circumstances of Democracy’. In Brady, Michael S. and Fricker, Miranda (eds.), The Epistemic Life of Groups: Essays in the Epistemology of Collectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 133–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peter, Fabienne. (2019) ‘Legitimate Political Authority and Expertise’. In Sadurski, Wojciech, Sevel, Michael, and Walton, Kevin (eds.), Legitimacy: The State and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 32–42.10.1093/oso/9780198825265.003.0003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettit, Philip. (2012) On the People's Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Railton, Peter. (2003) ‘On the Hypothetical and Non-hypothetical in Reasoning about Belief and Action’. In Cullity, Garett and Gaut, Berys (eds.), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 53–79.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. (1980) ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory’. Journal of Philosophy, 77, 515–72.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. (1993) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. (1988) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raz, Joseph. (1990) ‘Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 19, 3–46.Google Scholar
Raz, Joseph. (2006) ‘The Problem of Authority: Revisiting the Service Conception’. Minnesota Law Review, 90, 1003–44.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. (2014) Being Realistic about Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shafer-Landau, Russ. (2003) Moral Realism: A Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, A. John. (2001) Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Simmons, A. John. (2005) ‘Consent Theory for Libertarians’. Social Philosophy and Policy, 22, 330–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viehoff, Daniel. (2014) ‘Democratic Equality and Political Authority’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 42, 337–75.10.1111/papa.12036CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viehoff, Daniel. (2016) ‘Authority and Expertise’. Journal of Political Philosophy, 24, 406–26.10.1111/jopp.12100CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. (1999) Law and Disagreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Timothy. (2000) Knowledge and Its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar