Political Legitimacy and the Authority of Reasons: Relocating the Value of Democracy

Democracy is increasingly contested in contemporary politics. In many countries, populist movements question whether democratic procedures are necessary for legitimate political decision-making. While skepticism toward democracy is on the rise, scholarship in political theory offers few resources for addressing it: prevailing accounts of political legitimacy either stipulate democracy’s intrinsic value, without further grounding, or appeal to democracy’s epistemic benefits, while rarely explaining the bindingness of democratic decision-making. This paper proposes a novel view of democracy’s value by revisiting Raz’s service conception of political legitidmacy, an account that has fallen out of favor in political theory. On this conception, the state has legitimate authority over its subjects iff, and because, compliance with its directives makes it more likely that they conform to the reasons that already apply to them. Scholars mainly reject this account because it grounds political legitimacy solely in substantive outcomes—namely, improved conformity with reasons—and thereby overlooks the importance of procedural considerations. As a result, the account cannot explain why democratic procedures should matter for political legitimacy. Contrary to this criticism, this paper argues that the service conception can be revised to accommodate procedural considerations and provide a compelling account of democracy’s value. The revised service conception centrally distinguishes between two kinds of reasons: shared reasons and agent-specific reasons. Shared reasons are reasons that all subjects of political authority have independently of their contingent social roles, identities, or values—for example, reasons to live securely or to benefit from stable coordination mechanisms. Agent-specific reasons, by contrast, apply only to some members of the political community in virtue of their particular social positions, occupational roles, forms of association, or values. On the revised service conception, the state is straightforwardly legitimate in securing goods that agents have shared reasons to value, such as basic security or stable coordination. By contrast, legitimacy with respect to more expansive political ends depends on sensitivity to agent-specific reasons, which introduces a distinctive epistemic challenge: there is often considerable uncertainty about which such reasons exist, to whom they apply, and how they should be weighed. Democratic procedures—most notably participatory mechanisms such as democratic deliberation—are crucial for identifying the content and scope of agent-specific reasons. Through democratic participation, citizens articulate their perspectives, introduce new considerations and evidence, and draw attention to interests and reasons that might otherwise remain invisible. Therefore, on the revised service conception, legitimate political authority requires ensuring stable and reliable democratic participation, since only then is it capable of issuing directives that make it more likely that subjects conform to reasons that already apply to them. In addition to rehabilitating the service conception, this proposal identifies a novel locus of democracy’s value: democratic procedures are instrumentally valuable insofar as they uncover agent-specific reasons to which political authority must be responsive. It thereby offers a promising alternative to current proposals: it avoids merely stipulating democracy’s intrinsic value, and it explains the bindingness of democratically informed decisions by appeal to agents’ antecedent reasons—reasons by which they are already bound.