2025.05.10 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews
Matthias Brinkmann, An Instrumentalist Theory of Political Legitimacy, Oxford University Press, 2024, 301pp., $105.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198901143.
Reviewed by Fabian Wendt, Virginia Tech
According to the mainstream view, political institutions are legitimate if and only if they have political authority, the “right to rule”. Naturally, there is disagreement about what the right to rule involves, whether it is best understood in terms of Hohfeldian claim-rights to be obeyed, powers to impose duties, or liberty-rights to make and enforce law combined with claim-rights to non-interference. There is also disagreement, of course, about how political institutions can come to have the right to rule. Some think that governments need the consent of the governed, others appeal to natural duties of justice, Samaritan duties, democratic procedures, associative bonds, or citizens’ voluntary acceptance of benefits.
Matthias Brinkmann defends a fundamentally different, instrumentalist theory of political legitimacy. He calls it “liberal instrumentalism”. The…
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