Freedom and Arbitrary Power: How Competing Conceptions Reshape Political Legitimacy

Political legitimacy is often assessed by appeal to freedom, yet freedom itself is rarely treated as a contested concept within legitimacy theory. This paper argues that freedom does not ground legitimacy in a straightforward way. Instead, competing conceptions of freedom reshape how arbitrary power is identified and evaluated, reorganizing the standards by which political authority is judged legitimate. Adopting a diagnostic approach, the paper treats freedom as an interpretive lens rather than a foundational criterion. It examines three influential conceptions of freedom, non-interference, self-mastery, and non-domination, as developed by Isaiah Berlin, T. H. Green, and Philip Pettit. Each conception foregrounds certain forms of power while obscuring others, thereby altering what appears to require justification. The paper concludes that persistent disagreements about legitimacy reflect conceptual disagreements about arbitrariness rather than disputes over institutional design. This reframing helps explain why legitimacy disputes persist across political theory despite shared institutional concerns.