 Those who link political legitimacy to the problem of justifying authority tend to think of political coercion as only a means that legitimate states may use to secure their authority. As Leslie Green puts it: “Coercion threats provide secondary, reinforcing motivation when the political order fails in its primary normative technique of authoritative guidance” (Green 1988: 75). According to a second important interpretation, by contrast, the main function of legitimacy is precisely to justify coercive power. (For an excellent discussion of the two interpretations of legitimacy and a defense of the coercion-based interpretation, see Ripstein 2004; see also Hampton 1998.) On coercion-based interpretations, the main problem that a conception of legitimacy aims to solve is how to distinguish the rightful use of political power from mere coercion. One way to capture the thought is that, on these views, legitimacy relates to the way in which the rightful use of political power creates or constitutes political authority. Again, there are different ways in which this idea might be understood.