Please join us for a seminar with Aditi Bagchi (Fordham), who will be speaking on legitimization as a normative power. The meeting will be physically held in the Rik Medlik building, room 34 on the 1^st Floor (since it will be one of the only places on campus with power). To join online and to access the paper (pre-reading optional), see below.

Abstract: Functionalists claim that the legitimacy of a regime turns on whether it adequately performs the moral functions of the state. By contrast, voluntarists usually argue that legitimacy derives from individual consent to rule. Both approaches fail to make sense of the fact that most people think their governments are legitimate, even though many regimes are unjust and none are the product of unanimous consent. This paper develops an alternative voluntarist account. People legitimate their governments by exercising a distinct collective normative power. Political communities are plural subjects with an important moral interest in controlling who governs them. By looking to a government to solve collective problems, they manifest an intention to legitimate the government. They communicate their intent to the government by way of compliance with its directives and the demands that they make on it. Understanding legitimacy in this way helps us reconcile potentially competing intuitions. For example, though regimes either do or do not have the right to rule, we can have varying degrees of confidence about whether the power of legitimization has been exercised. We will tend to be more confident about democratic regimes. The normative power approach to legitimacy can also guide our thinking on practical questions about the normative consequences of polarization within a political community and how we should respond to unjust regimes that appear to enjoy the support of their subjects.

Link to paper: https://drive.google.com/open?id=10tcenxS-SaIozz9R6pzSKZqvrVuW2QPs&usp=drive_fs

Online session: click here