¹ Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1978 (available at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1978/singer-lecture.html).

² Clark, Ian, Legitimacy in International Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 200–5Google Scholar.

³ Cromartie, Alan, “Legitimacy,” in Political Concepts, ed. Bellamy, Richard and Mason, Andrew (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 95–104Google Scholar; Held, David, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995)Google Scholar; Barber, Benjamin, “Democracy and Terror in the Era of Jihad vs. McWorld,” in Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of the Global Order, ed. Booth, Ken and Dunne, Tim (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)Google Scholar, 255; Murphy, Craig N., “Global Governance: Poorly Done and Poorly Understood,” International Affairs 76, no. 4 (2000): 790Google Scholar; and Devetak, Richard and Higgott, Richard, “Justice Unbound? Globalization, States and the Transformation of the Social Bond,” International Affairs 75, no. 3 (1999): 490Google Scholar.

⁴ Clark, Legitimacy in International Society, 5; Applbaum, Arthur Isak, “Culture, Identity, and Legitimacy,” in Governance in a Globalizing World, ed. Nye, Joseph S. and Donahue, John D. (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2000), 24–25Google Scholar; Franck, Thomas M., The Power of Legitimacy Among Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 19; Watson, Adam, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar, 17; Hurd, Ian, “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics,” International Organization 53 (1999): 381Google Scholar; Bukovansky, Mlada, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 24; and Habermas, Jürgen, Legitimation Crisis (London: Heinemann, 1976), 95–96Google Scholar.

⁵ Max Weber's analysis of legitimacy as a form of domination led many discussions of the subject to limit explorations of its normative side. Ian Clark writes that for Weber, “rule is legitimate when its subjects believe it to be so” (“Legitimacy in a Global Order,” in “Governance and Resistance in World Politics,” ed. Armstrong, David, special issue, Review of International Studies 29 [2003]: 79Google Scholar). Robert Grafstein writes: “In Weber's hands … legitimacy no longer represents an evaluation of a regime; indeed, it no longer refers directly to the regime itself. Rather, it is defined as the belief of citizens that the regime is, to speak in circles, legitimate” (“The Failure of Weber's Conception of Legitimacy: Its Causes and Implications,” Journal of Politics 43, no. 2 [1981]: 456Google Scholar). Jean-Marc Coicaud also blames Weber for the way legitimacy has been dealt with in social science writing: “Although legitimacy is indissociable from the faculty of judgment, most works and reflections that make use of it are loath to take into account the dimension of judgment it implies. They refuse to conduct research into the conditions for the right to govern by inquiring about the criteria used to evaluate political life. Max Weber's analyses of legitimacy … have a great deal to do with this phenomenon” (Legitimacy and Politics, trans. Curtis, David Ames [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 1Google Scholar).

⁶ Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, 4.

⁷ Bell, Daniel, Communitarianism and Its Critics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)Google Scholar; The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Communitarianism” (by Daniel Bell), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/; Avineri, Shlomo and de-Shalit, Avner, eds., Communitarianism and Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Selznick, Phillip, The Communitarian Persuasion (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Frazer, Elizabeth, The Problems of Communitarian Politics: Unity and Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Mulhall, Stephen and Swift, Adam, Liberals and Communitarians (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar; Paul, Ellen Frankel, Miller, Fred. D. Jr., and Paul, Jeffrey, eds., The Communitarian Challenge to Liberalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Etzioni, Amitai, The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996)Google Scholar; Etzioni, , From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁸ Cromartie, “Legitimacy,” 96–99.

⁹ Ibid., 101–2.

¹⁰ Beetham, David, The Legitimation of Power (London: Macmillan, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Margaret Levi and Audrey Sacks, “Achieving Good Government—and, Maybe, Legitimacy” (paper presented at the Arusha Conference, New Frontiers of Social Policy, December 12–15, 2005).

¹² Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley, 1965)Google Scholar.

¹³ Bell, Communitarianism and Its Critics, 24–45.

¹⁴ Taylor, Charles, “Atomism,” in Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, 190; Sandel, Michael J., Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 92–98Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, 217–227; Etzioni, , “Self-Evident Truth (Beyond Relativism),” in Universalism vs. Relativism, ed. Browning, Don (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 19–32Google Scholar.

¹⁶ See, e.g., Kahneman, Daniel, “Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics,” American Economic Review 93, no. 5 (2003): 1449–75Google Scholar; Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos, “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk,” Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979), 263–91Google Scholar; Kahneman, Daniel and Tversky, Amos, eds., Choices, Values and Frames (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Thaler, Richard, Quasi-Rational Economics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1991)Google Scholar; Frank, Robert, Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Camerer, Colin F. and Lowenstein, George, “Behavioral Economics: Past, Present, Future,” in Advances in Behavioral Economics, ed. Camerer, C. F, Lowenstein, G., and Rabin, M. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 3–51Google Scholar; Ariely, Dan, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper Collins, 2008)Google Scholar; Berelson, Bernard and Steiner, Gary Albert, Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964)Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert, “The Potlatch between Political Science and Economics,” in Competition and Cooperation: Conversations with Nobelists about Economics and Political Science, ed. Alt, J., Levi, M., and Ostrom, E. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 112–19Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Sandel, Michael J., introduction to Liberalism and Its Critics, ed. Sandel, (New York: New York University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, 5.

¹⁸ Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 166.

¹⁹ Bell, Communitarianism and Its Critics.

²⁰ Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, 93–118.

²¹ Ackermanm, Bruce and Fishkin, James, “Deliberation Day,” Journal of Political Philosophy 10, no. 2 (2002): 129–52Google Scholar; Cohen, Joshua, “Deliberative Democracy,” in Deliberation, Participation and Democracy: Can the People Govern? ed. Rosenberg, Shawn W. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007)Google Scholar.

²² Young, Iris Marion, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

²³ Gutmann, Amy and Thompson, Dennis, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Shawn Rosenberg, “An Introduction: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Research on Deliberative Democracy,” in Deliberation, Participation and Democracy, 7; Knight, Jack and Johnson, James, “Aggregation and Deliberation: On the Possibility of Democratic Legitimacy,” Political Theory 22, no. 2 (1994): 289Google Scholar; Besson, Samantha and Marti, Jose Luis, introduction to Deliberative Democracy and Its Discontents, ed. Besson, and Marti, (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006)Google Scholar, xvi.

²⁴ Elster, Jon, ed., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 8; Besson and Marti, introduction, xvi.

²⁵ Farrelly, Colin, An Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory (London: Sage, 2004)Google Scholar, 140; Young, Inclusion and Democracy.

²⁶ Farrelly, An Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory, 141.

²⁷ Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, 79–80.

²⁸ Shawn Rosenberg, “An Introduction,” 7.

²⁹ Cohen, “Deliberative Democracy,” 220.

³⁰ Besson and Marti, introduction, xvi; see also Knight and Johnson, “Aggregation and Deliberation,” 289; Kuklinski, James H. et al. , “The Cognitive and Affective Bases of Political Tolerance Judgments,” American Journal of Political Science 35, no. 1 (1991): 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, 16–17.

³² Clark, Legitimacy in International Society; “Legitimacy in a Global Order,” 75–95.

³³ This conception of legitimacy stems in large part from the work of Max Weber (see footnote 5 above). As one author puts it, this understanding of the concept makes the test for legitimacy “not the truth of the philosopher, but the belief of the people” (Schabert, Tilo, “Power, Legitimacy and Truth: Reflections on the Impossibility to Legitimise Legitimations of Political Order,” in Legitimacy, ed. Moulakis, Athanasios [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985], 102Google Scholar; quoted in Clark, “Legitimacy in a Global Order,” 80).

³⁴ Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960)Google Scholar, 77; Applbaum, “Culture, Identity, and Legitimacy,” 24–25; Franck, Power of Legitimacy, 19; Watson, The Evolution of International Society, 17; Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority,” 381; Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics, 24; Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, 95–96; Beetham, Legitimation of Power.

³⁵ Michael Walzer argues that a “given society is just if its substantive life is lived … in a way faithful to the shared understandings of the members” (Spheres of Justice [New York: Basic Books, 1983], 313Google Scholar). For a comprehensive critique of Walzer on this point, see Etzioni, The New Golden Rule, 233. Walzer later changed this position, asserting a robust set of universal values (Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. [New York: Basic Books Classics, 2000]Google Scholar).

³⁶ Sally Bland, “So-Called Honor Crimes Revisited,” Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, April 2, 2007; Katherine Zoepf, “A Dishonorable Affair,” New York Times Magazine, September 23, 2007, 22; Sandler, Lauren, “When Love Is a Crime,” The New York Times, October 7, 2004Google Scholar.

³⁷ Rawls, John, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford Journal for Legal Studies 7, no. 1 (1987): 1–25Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, “Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights,” in The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, ed. Bell, Daniel and Bauer, Joanne (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 124–46Google Scholar.

³⁸ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Original Position” (by Fred D'Agostino), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/original-position/.

³⁹ Habermas, Jürgen, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990)Google Scholar, 94; Habermas, , Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 110; Habermas, , The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Held, Democracy and the Global Order; Barber, “Democracy and Terror,” 255; Murphy, “Global Governance,” 790; Devetak and Higgott, “Justice Unbound?” 490.

⁴⁰ Clark, Legitimacy in International Society; Zurn, Christopher, “Deliberative Democracy and Constitutional Review,” Law and Philosophy 21, no. 4/5 (2002): 510Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Sanders, Lynn, “Against Deliberation,” Political Theory 25, no. 3 (1997), 347–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Fine, Robert, Cosmopolitanism (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar; Markell, Patchen, “Making Affect Safe for Democracy? On ‘Constitutional Patriotism,’” Political Theory 28, no. 1 (2000): 38–63Google Scholar.

⁴³ Although these do help narrow the field of that which remains to be judged, a variety of proceduralism is, of course, at the heart of one version of democratic theory. My criticism is not that all procedures are worthless, but rather that they cannot, in and of themselves, provide a grounding point for the question at hand.

⁴⁴ This is a core concept of deontology (see The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Deontological Ethics” [by Larry Alexander and Michael Moore], http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/), although philosophers add to it numerous assumptions and implications, none of which are here embraced.

⁴⁵ Zuckert, Michael P., “Self-Evident Truth and the Declaration of Independence,” Review of Politics 49, no. 3 (1987): 322Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Wilson, James Q., The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1995)Google Scholar, 141.

⁴⁷ Pinker, Stephen, “The Moral Instinct,” New York Times Magazine, January 13, 2008, 36Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Harbour, Frances V., “Basic Moral Values: A Shared Core,” Ethics and International Affairs 9, no. 1 (1995): 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹ Actually a closer examination may reveal that universal values have nevertheless at least some appeal even to people so indoctrinated; however, this cannot be demonstrated here.

⁵⁰ It is important to recall that moral dialogues are not the source of legitimacy for these universal values; they merely allow people access to the self-evident truths that otherwise might be hidden from one.

⁵¹ For the same reason, in earlier eras, in which much of the world was dogmatic and sealed off, many people were prevented from hearing the voice of the same basic values. One would expect these values to apply to all futures, however in the same basic way constitutions apply, namely through interpretations that reflect the ever changing historical context.

⁵² Rorty, Richard, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Rorty, , “Putnam and the Relativist Menace,” The Journal of Philosophy 90, no. 9 (1993), 443–61Google Scholar; Fish, Stanley, “Don't Blame Relativism,” The Responsive Community 12, no. 3 (2002), 27–31Google Scholar.

⁵³ Rorty, “Putnam and the Relativist Menace,” 444.

⁵⁴ On his philosophical antifoundationalism, Rorty writes: “When we go, so do our norms and standards of rational assertibility. Does truth go too? Truth neither comes nor goes. That is not because it is an entity that enjoys an atemporal existence, but because it is not an entity at all. The word ‘truth’, in this context, is just the reification of an approbative and indefinable adjective” (ibid., 453). See Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.

⁵⁵ Jamieson, Dale, “When Utilitarians Should Be Virtue Theorists,” Utilitas 19, no. 2 (2007), 160–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.