Limits of Legitimacy: Personal Freedom and State Security in Political and Legal Comparison

The subject of the research is the political-legal nature of the legitimacy of restrictions on individual rights in the context of ensuring national security. The object of analysis is the models of normative and institutional regulation of the balance between personal freedom and state interest in the context of the transformation of threats and crises of legitimacy. The author examines the philosophical foundations of the concept of legitimacy, the typology of rights restrictions, the rhetoric of threats, and the political-legal features of China, Russia, the USA, and the European Union. The aim of the article is to identify the normative and discourse mechanisms of legitimizing restrictions on freedom in the context of security threats. The hypothesis proposes a shift in balance toward prioritizing state security with a decrease in the level of procedural accountability. The methodology is based on a synthesis of the philosophy of law, comparative legal and critical discourse analysis, allowing for the identification of the normative and value-based foundations of legitimacy models. As a result of the analysis, four models of the relationship between freedom and security are identified—from ideological control to legal accountability. It is established that a universal approach to defining permissible restrictions is impossible without considering the legal culture and rhetorical constructions of threats. The practical significance lies in the application of the results for assessing the permissibility of restrictions and developing acts in the field of digital security. The research methodology includes the philosophy of law, comparative legal analysis, and critical discourse analysis, enabling the identification of normative, institutional, and rhetorical mechanisms for legitimizing restrictions on individual rights in various political-legal systems. The novelty of the research lies in the comprehensive philosophical-legal and comparative legal analysis of the legitimacy of restrictions on individual rights in the face of the transformation of the political-legal order and the rise of exceptional regimes. Unlike existing works, the author combines normative, institutional, and discursive approaches, which enables a revelation of the deep differences in legitimacy models between authoritarian and liberal jurisdictions. A significant contribution of the author is the development of a typology of legitimacy models (PRC, RF, USA, EU) and the identification of the relationship between the level of institutional accountability and the permissibility of restrictions. The main conclusions of the conducted study are: the impossibility of universalizing the balance between freedom and security; the existence of stable discursive mechanisms for normalizing exception; and the need to rethink the concepts of "threat" and "legitimacy" within the framework of legal analysis.

Legitimacy, National security, Personal freedoms, Restriction of rights, Sovereignty, State of exception, Political and legal discourse, Comparative analysis, Legal culture, Philosophy of law