Freedom, authority, and social order: The legitimacy of state coercion in anarchist and minimalist theory

Although libertarians typically eschew coercion as a means to political ends, many theorists cannot avoid endorsing the coercion that is entailed by even minimal states when addressing the concerns of individualist anarchists. The dissertation first identifies distinct approaches to libertarian theory, then examines the arguments justifying the minimal level of coercion necessary for the state. I argue that minimal state libertarians implicitly appeal to a particular set of concerns that, despite the general presumption against the state, are taken to justify political authority. I isolate and examine these core worries about the threat of chaos and compare them against anarchist responses to the challenges they pose. Although some economists and game theorists have worked on the problem of coercion and cooperation, this body of work has not yet been brought to bear on the philosophical discussion about the relationship of the individual to the state, at least not with regard to resolving the dispute between libertarian statists and libertarian anarchists. I conclude that the anarchists' conception of legal theory and social order, in light of the work on the evolution of cooperation, is sufficiently plausible to answer the concerns of libertarian statists.