Justice, Legitimacy, and Diversity: Political Authority Between Realism and Moralism

Most contemporary political philosophers take justice#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;rather than legitimacy#xE2;#xAC;#x1D;to be the fundamental virtue of political institutions vis-#xC3;#xA0;-vis the challenges of ethical diversity. Justice-driven theorists are primarily concerned with finding mutually acceptable terms to arbitrate the claims of conflicting individuals and groups. Legitimacy-driven theorists, instead, focus on the conditions under which those exercising political authority on an ethically heterogeneous polity are entitled to do so. But what difference would it make to the management of ethical diversity in liberal democratic societies if legitimacy were prior to or independent from justice? This question identifies a widely underexplored issue whose theoretical salience shows how the understanding of what constitutes the primary question of political philosophy has a deep impact on how practical political questions are interpreted and addressed. What difference would it make, for example, whether the alleged democratic deficit of the European Union were couched in terms of the justice or legitimacy of its institutions? How should the issue of the integration of minorities be addressed whether one assigned priority to the justice or legitimacy of a liberal polity? Addressing these and other topical questions, the book offers a new theoretical angle from which to consider a number of pressing social and political issues. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy.