From Legitimacy to Persistence: A Structural Turn in Political Philosophy

Political philosophy has long centered on the question of how political power can be justified, developing normative arguments around principles of justice, sources of legitimacy, and institutional design. Yet the repeated instability of political orders throughout history and in contemporary practice suggests that theories of legitimacy alone are insufficient to account for persistent political crises. This article raises a more fundamental, yet long unexamined, question: whether political order is structurally capable of long-term persistence under its basic conditions of existence. Through a structural analysis of the implicit assumptions underlying political legitimacy, the article argues that mainstream political philosophy commonly presupposes that legitimacy can be conclusively established, authority can be ultimately grounded, and political order can be stably maintained. These presuppositions, however, have rarely been examined as existential assumptions. Against this background, the article identifies three structural impossibilities confronting political order: (1) legitimacy cannot be conclusively closed; (2) legitimacy disputes cannot be terminated in time; and (3) authority cannot be outsourced to any external source. These impossibilities do not reflect empirical failures or normative deficiencies, but arise from the structural conditions of political order itself. To avoid misreading these claims as political nihilism, the article distinguishes analytically between stability, legitimacy, justice, and persistence, and introduces persistence as a new core dimension for analyzing political order. It is important to emphasize that this article does not seek to construct a complete theory of political persistence; rather, it offers a structural examination of the existential presupposition that political legitimacy can be completed. Persistence does not depend on the resolution of legitimacy disputes, but refers to the capacity of a political order to sustain its existence through continuous internal adjustment under conditions where legitimacy remains inherently incomplete. Political order should therefore be understood as a transitional structure, rather than a final form that can be designed and completed once and for all. The article ultimately argues that political philosophy must undergo a structural reorientation: from a normative approach centered on legitimacy toward an analysis of the structural persistence of political order. The core task of politics is not the elimination of instability, but the management and endurance of instability under conditions where legitimacy cannot be conclusively closed. This shift enables political philosophy to reconfigure its problem orientation and provides a structural framework for understanding contemporary political crises beyond normative competition.