In a series of essays—in particular, his 1994 essay “Assure and Threaten”—David Gauthier develops a two-tier pragmatic theory of practical rationality and argues, within that theory, for a distinctive account of the rationality of following through with prior assurances or threats. His discussion suggests that certain kinds of temporally extended agency play a special role in one’s temporally extended life going well. I argue that a related idea about diachronic self-governance helps explain a sense in which an accepted deliberative standard can be self-reinforcing. And this gives us resources to adjust Gauthier’s theory in response to a threat of what Kieran Setiya has called a “fragmentation of practical reason.”