ABSTRACT Part III of Anarchy, State, and Utopia defends the minimal state as a framework for utopia. On Bader's reconstruction, this defense contains two justificatory strands: a common ground argument, which shows the minimal state to be compatible with the widest range of utopian associations, and an approximation argument, which holds it to be the framework most likely to generate such associations in practice. I argue that the convergence of these two strands on the minimal state depends on the associational menu being exogenous to institutional structure. Once we recognize that founding has the structure of a public goods problem, this assumption fails: the menu is shaped by the incentive environment a framework creates for potential founders, and a minimal state that does nothing to coordinate founding may produce a narrower and less representative range of associations than the approximation argument supposes. Combined with the rights‐based justification of the minimal state in Parts I and II, this divergence generates a three‐way trade‐off that Nozick's framework does not resolve.
Carlo Ludovico Cordasco (Mon,) studied this question.