Consider, for example, a person with the capacity to experience strong feelings of guilt upon breaking a promise—that is, a person with a conscience. This person will often honor his promises even when material incentives favor breaking them. It is precisely this capacity of emotional forces to override rational calculations that makes them candidates for commitment devices.#
Lots of ink has been spilled in political philosophy over whether liberty is valuable as an end in itself, or as a means to some other end. I’d like to suggest that most discussions of political liberty can and should be understood in terms of legitimacy, and without invoking moral . . .