Political Obligation

In relation to Legal Authority and Obligation, see also the entries about Legal Authority (here), Obligations in the Law (here) and Normativity of Law (here).

A. P. D’Entrèves, in his 1968 paper titled “On the Nature of Political Obligation” (Philosophy 43 (166):309 – 323) argues that the phrase ‘political obligation’ is far more popular in English than in other European languages. And that this may be due to historical circumstances, or to a peculiar bent of the English mind. He continues saying that that this subject would probably sound rather uncommon to an Italian audience, for example.

Papers and Books

• S. Aiyar (2000). The Problem of Law’s Authority: John Finnis and Joseph Raz on Legal Obligation. [REVIEW] Law and Philosophy 19 (4):465-489.
• Arthur Isak Applbaum (2010). Legitimacy Without the Duty to Obey. Philosophy and Public Affairs 38 (3):215-239.
• W. Macmahon Ball (1931). The Limits of Political Obligation. International Journal of Ethics 41 (3):296-304.
• Charles R. Beitz (1980). Tacit Consent and Property Rights. Political Theory 8 (4):487-502.
• John G. Bennett (1979). A Note on Locke’s Theory of Tacit Consent. Philosophical Review 88 (2):224-234.
• Harry Beran (1977). In Defense of the Consent Theory of Political Obligation and Authority. Ethics 87 (3):260-271.
• Harry Beran (1976). Political Obligation and Democracy. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 54 (3):250 – 254.
• Harry Beran (1972). Ought, Obligation and Duty. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 50 (3):207-221.
• William S. Boardman (1987). Coordination and the Moral Obligation to Obey the Law. Ethics 97 (3):546-557.
• Aryeh Botwinick (1981). Politics in a World of Scarcity: Theories of Justice and Political Obligation. Journal of Social Philosophy 12 (3):7-15.
• Jeffrey Brand-Ballard (2010). Limits of Legality: The Ethics of Lawless Judging. Oxford University Press. Introduction — Practical reasons and judicial use of force — Deviating from legal standards — The legal duties of judges — The normative classification of legal results — Reasons to deviate — Adherence rules — Obeying adherence rules — The judicial oath — Legal duty and political obligation — Systemic effects — Agent-relative principles — Optimal adherence rules — Guidance rules — Treating like cases alike — Implementation — Theoretical implications — Conclusion.
• Nathan Brett (2008). Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? – By Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John Simmons. Philosophical Books 49 (1):86-88.
• Kimberley Brownlee (2008). Legal Obligation as a Duty of Deference. Law and Philosophy 27 (6):583 – 597. An enduring question in political and legal philosophy concerns whether we have a general moral obligation to follow the law. In this paper, I argue that Philip Soper’s intuitively appealing effort to give new life to the idea of legal obligation by characterising it as a duty of deference is ultimately unpersuasive. Soper claims that people who understand what a legal system is and admit that it is valuable must recognise that they would be morally inconsistent to deny that they (…)
• Allen Buchanan (2002). Political Legitimacy and Democracy. Ethics 112 (4):689-719.
• Allen Buchanan (1999). Recognitional Legitimacy and the State System. Philosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1):46-78.
• Allen E. Buchanan (2004). Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law. Oxford University Press. This book articulates a systematic vision of an international legal system grounded in the commitment to justice for all persons. It provides a probing exploration of the moral issues involved in disputes about secession, ethno-national conflict, “the right of self-determination of peoples,” human rights, and the legitimacy of the international legal system itself. Buchanan advances vigorous criticisms of the central dogmas of international relations and international law, arguing that the international legal system should make justice, not simply peace among states, (…)
• Allen Buchanan & Robert O. Keohane (2006). The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions. Ethics and International Affairs 20 (4):405-437. The authors articulate a global public standard for the normative legitimacy of global governance institutions. This standard can provide the basis for principled criticism of global governance institutions and guide reform efforts in circumstances in which people disagree deeply about the demands of global justice and the role that global governance institutions should play in meeting them.
• A. H. Campbell (1965). Obligation and Obedience to Law. [Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press].
• Emile Capriotti (1988). The Grounds and Limits of Political Obligation. Dissertation, University of Southern California. This dissertation deals with the question of general political obligation. General political obligation is concerned with the question of whether citizens owe an obligation to states or political entities generally. This question is independent of whether citizens owe certain obligations to particular states under specific constitutions. ;The argument of the dissertation attempts to show that the individual receives benefits from the state that form both the grounds and also the limits of that obligation to the state.
• John R. Carnes (1960). Why Should I Obey the Law? Ethics 71 (1):14-26.
• Craig L. Carr (2004). Fairness and Political Obligation-Again. Social Theory and Practice 30 (1):33-57.
• Craig L. Carr (2002). Fairness and Political Obligation. Social Theory and Practice 28 (1):1-28.
• Alan Carter (2006). The Evolution of Rawls’s Justification of Political Compliance: Part 1 of the Problem of Political Compliance in Rawls’s Theories of Justice. Journal of Moral Philosophy 3 (1):7-21. As Rawls’s thought evolved from his 1958 article ‘Justice as Fairness’ to the 1996 edition of his book Political Liberalism, his response to the problem of political compliance would seem to have undergone a number of changes. This article critically evaluates the development of Rawls’s various explicit or implied arguments that serve to justify compliance to just social arrangements, and concludes that the problem of political compliance remains without any cogent solution within the vast corpus of Rawls’s work.
• Emanuela Ceva (2015). Political Justification Through Democratic Participation. Social Theory and Practice 41 (1):26-50. On a proceduralist account of democracy, collective decisions derive their jus- tification-at least in part-from the qualities of the process through which they have been made. To fulfill its justificatory function, this process should ensure that citizens have an equal right to political participation as a respectful response to their equal status as agents capable of self-legislation. How should democratic participation be understood if it is to offer such a procedural justification for democratic decisions?
• Emanuela Ceva (2009). Just Procedures with Controversial Outcomes: On the Grounds for Substantive Disputation Within a Procedural Theory of Justice. Res Publica 15 (3):219-235. Acts of civil disobedience and conscientious objection provide valuable indications of the congruence of political outcomes with citizens’ conceptions of justice and the good. As their primary concern is substantive, their logic seems extraneous to procedural approaches to justice. Accordingly, it has often been argued that these latter condemn citizens to a ‘deaf-and-blind’ acceptance of the outcomes of agreed procedures. A closer analysis of such acts of contestation shall reveal that although, for proceduralism, the outcomes of just procedures cannot be (…)
• Lian Cheng (1999). Two Conceptions of Political Obligation. Dissertation, Rice University. This thesis addresses one of the central questions in political philosophy, the question of political obligation why people have a duty to support the political institutions of their countries. The traditional and dominant answer to this question is voluntarism, which claims that people have such a duty because they have consented to the ruling of their states. The thesis systematically refutes this voluntarist approach, criticizes some of today’s leading non-voluntarist alternatives to the voluntarist one.
• James F. Childress (1971). Civil Disobedience and Political Obligation a Study in Christian Social Ethics. Monograph Collection (Matt – Pseudo).
• T. Christiano & S. Sciaraffa (2003). Legal Positivism and the Nature of Legal Obligation. Law and Philosophy 22 (5):487-512.
• Thomas Christiano (1999). Justice and Disagreement at the Foundations of Political Authority. Ethics 110 (1):165-187.
• Thomas I. Cook (1939). Political Obligation, Democracy, and Moralistic Legislation. Ethics 49 (2):148-168.
• David Copp (1999). The Idea of a Legitimate State. Philosophy and Public Affairs 28 (1):3-45.
• R. Dagger (2000). Philosophical Anarchism and its Fallacies:A Review Essay. [REVIEW] Law and Philosophy 19 (3):391-406.
• R. Dagger (1977). Books in Review : The Shotgun Behind the Door: Liberalism and the Problem of Political Obligation by Philip Abbott. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976. Pp. Xv, 208. $8.00. [REVIEW] Political Theory 5 (1):133-136.
• Govert den Hartogh (2002). Mutual Expectations: A Conventionalist Theory of Law. Kluwer Law International. The law persists because people have reasons to comply with its rules. What characterizes those reasons is their interdependence: each of us only has a reason to comply because he or she expects the others to comply for the same reasons. The rules may help us to solve coordination problems, but the interaction patterns regulated by them also include Prisoner’s Dilemma games, Division problems and Assurance problems. In these “games” the rules can only persist if people can be expected to (…)
• R. Derathe (1976). Political Obligation According to Hume. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 30 (115):91-103.
• Sam Duncan (2007). The Borders of Justice: Kant and Waldron on Political Obligation and Range Limitation. Social Theory and Practice 33 (1):27-46.
• John Dunn (1996). The History of Political Theory and Other Essays. Cambridge University Press. In this collection of recent essays (several appearing in English for the first time), John Dunn brings his characteristically acute and penetrative insight to a wide range of political issues. In the first essay, ‘The history of political theory’, Professor Dunn argues for the importance of a historical perspective in the study of political thought. Other pieces engage with central concepts of political philosophy such as obligation, trust, freedom of conscience and property. A group of studies tackle specific contemporary problems .
• P. Durning (2003). Joseph Raz and the Instrumental Justification of a Duty to Obey the Law. Law and Philosophy 22 (6):597-620.
• Patrick Durning (2003). Political Legitimacy and the Duty to Obey the Law. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (3):373 – 389.

Resources

See Also

Political Theory (15.1)
Natural obligation (11.8)
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy and the Political History of the United States (10.9)
Political Risk (10.2)
Political Science (10)
Political Parties (10)
Political Crimes (9.5)