The legitimation trap: substantive justice as decolonial praxis

Abstract

Postcolonial states can organize dispossession through institutions that remain procedurally regular, legally authoritative, and indispensable to citizens’ claims. This article theorizes the legitimation trap as a contingent configuration in which procedural propriety certifies a substantively unjust order and narrows the terms in which that order can be contested. The trap mediates property, extraction, and racialised accumulation; it does not replace them as causes of material injustice. Citizens may internalize deprivation as personal inadequacy, a pathway of self-colonisation, while alternatives include strategic or cynical compliance, withdrawal, and collective resistance. We develop substantive justice as a conflict-aware decolonial praxis grounded in redistribution, recognitive dignity, and ontological plurality, with procedure retained as a safeguard against arbitrariness. Illustrations from Nigeria, South Africa, and Bolivia expose the framework’s conditions and tensions. The argument reconnects legitimacy to the contested question of whether people can flourish.