 The three higher-order interests provide the basis for Rawls’s account of primary social goods. The primary goods are the all-purpose social means that are necessary to the exercise and development of the moral powers and to pursue a wide variety of conceptions of the good. Rawls describes them initially in Theory as goods that any rational person should want, whatever his or her rational plan of life. The primary social goods are: rights and liberties; powers and diverse opportunities; income and wealth; and the social bases of self-respect. ‘Powers’ refer not simply to a capacity to effect outcomes or influence others’ behavior. Rawls rather uses the term ‘powers’ to refer to the legal and institutional abilities and prerogatives that attend offices and social positions. Hence, he sometimes refers to the primary goods of “powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of authority and responsibility” (JF 58). Members of various professions and trades have institutional powers and prerogatives that are characteristic of their position and which are necessary if they are to carry out their respective roles and responsibilities. By income and wealth Rawls says he intends “all-purpose means” that have an exchange value, which are generally needed to achieve a wide range of ends (JF 58–59). Finally, “the social bases of self-respect” are features of institutions that are needed to enable people to have the confidence that they and their position in society are respected and that their conception of the good is worth pursuing and achievable by themselves. These features depend upon history and culture. Primary among these social bases of self respect in a democratic society, Rawls will contend, are equal recognition of persons as citizens, and hence the institutional conditions needed for equal citizenship, including equality of basic rights and liberties with equal political rights; fair equality of opportunities; and personal independence guaranteed by adequate material means for achieving it. The social bases of self-respect are crucial to Rawls’s argument for equal basic liberties, especially political equality and equal rights of political participation. 