The central place of self-legitimation in the activity of government has implications both for how we understand the activity of governing, and for what we can reasonably expect from it. Governing is not for those most directly involved in it only an instrumental activity but, like William Morris's useful work, inherently satisfying, an end in itself. As a self-sufficient activity in this sense, the activity of ruling or governing involves the cultivation of a distinctive identity which both depicts and justifies ruling. Endogenous self-legitimation acts as an identification which justifies and explains the actions of rulers, and each dimension, justification and explanation sustains the other. If the greatest investment in legitimation is endogenous rather than exogenous, arguments about legitimation as involving the recognition or acknowledgement or approval of the qualities or qualifications of rulers need recasting. It is not so much recognition in the market place or the street, or on the television or computer screen that will frequently be sought, as much as recognition in the embassy, the legislature, the council chamber or the presidential palace. This helps to explain the relative importance for rulers of relations, on the one hand, with other states and governing organisations and, on the other, with their subjects. It contributes to answering the question ‘Why do rulers bother with endogenous self-legitimation?’ ‘Why are they not cynically manipulative, keeping legitimation solely for public use?’ On one view of politics, that is of course exactly what they do do.