Political legitimacy is highly important internationally—and probably increasingly so. The question of legitimacy is at the heart of some of the most vital and debated issues of international relations and international law. Think about the centrality of legitimacy with respect to just war theory, issues such as self-determination, the secession of a country and the creation of a new one, state recognition, tensions between the demands of national sovereignty and those of human rights, international humanitarian interventions, and so on. At stake in each of these situations is identifying what is the right course of action and what is legitimate and what is not—and how these situations are handled has an influence on the international system and its legitimacy. In this perspective, Chapter 7 shows that the significance of legitimacy at the international level unfolds in the context of the interactions between the national and international realms and the following distinctions: we/them, inside/outside, particularist/universalist, and system/society.