ABSTRACT

Folks speak indiscriminately of legitimate power, legitimate states, legitimate government and legitimate authority, and so one might think that issues concerning the grounds for judgements of legitimacy are the same in each case. I don’t think the folk are wrong in employing these loose equivalences, but they have to be scrutinized and defended since there are many philosophers who mark important distinctions hereabouts. In particular, they argue (or it is a clear implication of their arguments)1 that there can be, indeed are, legitimate states which do not possess any authority over their subjects. Legitimacy and authority are different normative properties.