The NES and Reducibility Method: Testing Political Authority

This paper develops the Natural Equality of Sovereignty and the Reducibility Method into a diagnostic framework for testing political authority. Building on the foundational claim that categorical sovereignty belongs irreducibly to individual agents, it argues that no act of coercion and no standing institution of coercive authority possesses legitimacy by virtue of scale, tradition, legal form, democratic procedure, or institutional status alone. Authority is legitimate only insofar as its coercive powers are reducible to powers that sovereign agents could themselves justifiably exercise in defence of sovereignty. The paper introduces the Reducibility Principle, the Derivative Authority Principle, a three-tier justification pyramid, and violation classes A–C as tools for assessing coercive legitimacy across individual, institutional, and procedural domains. It further argues that procedural legality cannot generate legitimacy ex nihilo, and that political authorities remain structurally compelled to justify themselves to those over whom they claim power. The result is a sovereignty-based test of political authority that remains neutral with respect to institutional form while rejecting state exceptionalism, circular authority, and unreduced appeals to legal or institutional status.