There are two bodies of literature, one offering theories of the legitimacy of domestic institutions like states, another offering theories of the legitimacy of international institutions like the IMF. Accounts of domestic legitimacy stress the importance of democratic procedure, while few to no theorists make democracy a necessary condition for the legitimacy of international institutions. In this paper, I ask whether this asymmetry can be defended. Is there a unified higher-order theory which can explain why legitimacy requires democracy in the (...) domestic context, but not in the international context? I argue that no proceduralist higher-order theory succeeds, and that we need to look for other solutions. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman and some allied scholars argue that a ‘samaritan theory’ can justify state coercion. They also suppose that states may provide robust, social egalitarian welfare provisions for a variety of reasons that would arise within samaritan states. However, the most promising reasons—samaritanism itself, natural socialism, relational equality, and anti-crime paternalism—cannot support robust provision without discarding the strong presumption favoring individual liberty which must motivate the samaritan theory. Consequently, a samaritan state cannot be a robust social welfare state.

On Christopher H. Wellman’s Samaritan account of political legitimacy, the state is justified in coercing its subjects because doing so is necessary to rescue them from the perils of the state of nature. Samaritanism – the principle that we are morally permitted to do what is necessary to rescue someone from serious peril if in doing so we do not impose unreasonable costs on others – only justifies a minimal state, in Wellman’s view. I argue contra Wellman that Samaritanism justifies (...) an extensive, liberal-egalitarian state. (shrink)