Coordination without Final Authority: Structural Axioms of Pluralist Legitimacy

Contemporary pluralistic societies face a distinctive problem: without a universally accepted final authority—whether divine, moral, or epistemic—on what basis can we justify the exercise of power or the resolution of fundamental disagreements? This paper proposes a structural approach to legitimacy in pluralist societies, grounded not in moral consensus but in the inherent requirements for stable, non-dominating coordination. Building on the concept of standing—the capacity of an agent or institution to have its directives bind others—we introduce two foundational axioms for pluralist legitimacy. The Axiom of Pluralistic Inclusion formalizes the principle that no agent can wield authority without first being included in the community of mutual recognition: every individual must have a pathway from having no standing (“nullity”) to having some standing in collective decision-making. The Axiom of Symmetry holds that social coordination is structurally stable only when all agents enjoy an equal standing in shared decision-making; any persistent asymmetry in standing generates systemic fragility—heightened resistance, feedback failures, and tendencies toward breakdown. We articulate these axioms in dialogue with classical and contemporary ideas of consent, equality, and non-domination (from social contract theory to Pettit’s republicanism), while moving beyond moral and procedural approaches to legitimacy. Instead, we outline a “social physics” of legitimacy: a set of invariant structural conditions that any pluralistic social order must satisfy to remain stable and avoid domination. These structural conditions (universal inclusion and symmetry of standing) are argued to be necessary conditions for a claim to political or moral authority to be considered legitimate in a deeply diverse society. We conclude by showing how this framework reframes enduring debates about authority, rights, and justice, ensuring that power cannot be decoupled from accountability even in the absence of shared final ends.