Self-evident or not, they cannot be uncontroversial, because a complete theory of
democratic legitimacy must justify these origins. Current events provide several cases in
point: is it “self-evident and uncontroversial” that the elections imposed by force upon
Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States were democratically legitimate? If democracy
is the ultimate ground of legitimacy, we do not see how that question can be answered
either way. But if democracy is an instrumental good in the service of a metanorm, we
can judge the legitimacy of the elections in Iraq and Afghanistan by whether or not they
succeeded in serving that metanorm. We can ask, with Locke, whether those elections
were “manifestly for the good of the people.” If so, they were legitimate; if not, not.
As we have said, we do not claim that this problem is necessarily an insurmountable
problem, only that it is a problem, and an important one, and democratic theorists do not
seem to be treating it as such. Perhaps contemporary democratic theory can develop an
adequate solution to this problem. Or perhaps it already provides a solution, but one that
is not being articulated in such a way that it is visible to those who do not professionally
specialize in democratic theory. In any case, contemporary democratic theory cannot
provide a complete theory of legitimacy until it openly acknowledges the scope of this
problem and explicitly presents a satisfactory answer.
39
Convention