Legitimating myths trap power-holders in chains of forced consistency

Evidence

Power-holders are to use their power for the good, to uphold the law, to protect the poor. The other side of this coin is that opportunism and adapting oneself to the situation must then be sacrificed. Consistency constraints are built into the chain of the power-holder’s own conduct (see point 4 in the previous chapter). The myth of legitimation increases the consequences of the exercise of power. If one has started a project, it is very hard, from a normative viewpoint, to abandon it. Each engagement reduces the freedom of the power-holder, who is caught up in consequential obligations. If pronouncing on any appeal made to him has the force of law, he must be careful about showing favour. In spite of all precautions and tactical readiness for inconsistency, it is, in such initial structural conditions, probable that the normative, moralistic dimensions of power, and the frequency of its actual exercise, will increase reciprocally. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 671

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to Stevens’s situation: once Stevens commits to serving Darlington, the legitimation of that role forces consistency and forecloses ethical exit — Luhmann’s account of how moral bonds to an institution reduce the power-holder’s (and by analogy the servant’s) freedom. — connects to: Survival under mythic divinities requires total submission to power; State intervention to secure legitimation generates an ever-deepening need for more legitimation — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2697; Copying authorities breeds inconsistent beliefs because convictions go unchecked — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 999 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that legitimacy reduces rather than expands the power-holder’s freedom — each engagement contracts options — is a genuinely counterintuitive, dense mechanism worth sitting with.