The Service Conception, Specification Problem and Its Moral Foundations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12568655 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gürkan Çapar (0000-0002-7381-1061, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Res Publica. Revista de Historia de las Ideas Politicas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1576-4184 • E-ISSN: 1989-6115 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s11158-025-09738-7 |
| OpenAlex | W4414853781 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 66 |
Any theory of legitimacy encompassing a general standard applicable to all kinds of authorities is required to come to terms with the problem of specification and tell us something about how to make this general standard operational. The service conception of authority (SC) is also presented, and hailed, as a general standard of legitimacy, yet it remains to be addressed how it can be applied to different kinds of authorities such as parental, domestic political, and international authorities. There are two different aspects of the specification problem besetting SC. While one concerns specifying the sort of problem an authority is expected to solve, the other pertains to the different meanings that the independence condition may acquire when an individual is subject to the different kinds of authorities such as recognitional, parental, and international. In addressing this second specification question, the article argues that SC needs a moral foundation to give a concrete meaning to the independence condition and find a balance between its two partially contradictory conditions. Raz explains what the independence condition implies for political authorities when he introduces his perfectionist liberalism as an alternative to its anti-perfectionist variant and argues that political authorities are warranted to pursue perfectionist policies and take necessary steps to create the conditions that make individuals autonomous (substantive conception of individual autonomy). However, it is yet to be examined what the independence condition, thought together with Raz’s perfectionist liberalism, implies for other kinds of authorities. The article concludes by making some cursory explanations for the way in which recognitional/international and parental authorities interact with their subjects when they are delivering their services
Foundation (evidence · Independence (probability theory · Legitimacy · Liberalism · Meaning (existential · Political philosophy · Politics · sort · Ethics in Business and Education · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
A Theory of Global Governance
The Heart of Human Rights
The Concept of Law
Towards Non-essentialism – Tracking Rival Views of Legitimacy as a Right to Rule
Paternalism
Legitimacy, Democracy, and Razian Authority
Ronald Dworkin, State Consent, and Progressive Cosmopolitanism
The Grounds of Political Legitimacy
On Realist Legitimacy
The Authority of the State
The Moral Magic of Consent
Authority, Legitimacy, and the Obligation to Obey the Law
Liberalism with Excellence
Epistemic Authority
Being Realistic about Reasons
The Grounds of Political Legitimacy
You can't tell me what to do! Why should states comply with international institutions
Practical Reason and Norms
The paradox of global constitutionalism
The ethics of state consent to international law
The UN Security Council, normative legitimacy and the challenge of specificity
Legitimate international authority and institutional diversity
Legitimacy beyond the state
Legitimate Political Authority and Sovereignty
Autonomy as Non‐alienation, Autonomy as Sovereignty, and Politics
Authority and Expertise
(Il)legitimacy of international intellectual property regime
State Consent and Disagreement in International Law-Making. Dissolving the Paradox
The Limits of Razian Authority
The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will
The Origins of Human Rights Regimes
The asymmetry between domestic and global legitimacy
An Institutional Conception of Authority
Tying legitimacy to political power
Joseph Raz's Theory of Authority
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |