State legitimacy and self-fulfilling dynamics

Abstract Joseph Raz’s service conception of legitimacy says citizens must obey the state when its directives allow them to comply with reason better than they would by deciding independently. Yet citizens’ capacity to decide for themselves is endogenous to state authority: the more they defer, the less competent they might become. Consequently, a state might secure its legitimacy through a self-fulfilling dynamic whereby citizens need state authority only because they have grown dependent upon it. This article diagnoses the problem and explains how the service conception can guard against it. Besides Raz's account, its argument applies to any theory of legitimacy with a “service” component.