Again on the Legitimacy of Government

In response to an earlier post about the moral legitimacy of governments John the Other wrote:

I think a government gains legitimacy by the fact that people would prefer it to the feudalism and/or Iraq-situation that would result if it went away.

One thought that Hussein's government was terrible and illegitimate, but seeing what happened to Iraq since his departure, one is at least much less certain.

While I nominally agree with this, I would like to expand a little bit. First, I think it is important to stress that the preference for government over no government is individual not collective. For a government to be morally legitimate, it must respect the rights of everyone on an individual basis. Second, for a government to be morally legitimate, the people in it need to be able to choose between government and no government, not just prefer it. Taking these two points into account, it is clear the Hussein's government was not morally legitimate because the people he killed would no doubt prefer no government to being dead, but they had no choice to opt out. This is not to say I support the Iraq war; the war was obviously not well planned, it continues to be expensive, and it has probably caused net harm to the people in Iraq.