What Political Obligation Is

Test the difference with a rule you think has no independent moral content at all, such as driving on the left. There is nothing morally superior about the left. If political obligation exists, you ought to drive on the left in India, and it is the existence of the Indian rule and nothing else that makes it so.

The features of the obligation

It is moral, not merely legal. Otherwise the question is circular.

It is owed to a particular state. An Indian citizen owes obedience to Indian law and not to Sri Lankan law, and the theories differ sharply about what creates that particularity.

It is content independent. This is the most important feature and the hardest. The obligation attaches because of the source of the command, not because of what the command says. If you obeyed only the rules you agreed with, you would be following your own judgment and the state would be doing no work.

It is prima facie, not absolute. Almost every theorist accepts that it can be outweighed. That concession is what makes topic 2.3 possible: if the duty were absolute there could be no problem about unjust laws.

It is general. It covers the whole body of law, not a selection.

What has to be explained

A good answer states the problem before answering it, because most theories fail on one of these four and knowing which is how you evaluate them.

Generality. Why does the duty cover the whole of the law rather than the parts you approve of?

Particularity. Why do you owe it to this state rather than to any well-run state?

Content independence. Why does the source bind you rather than the merits?

Universality within the state. Does it bind everybody, including those who were never asked and those the state treats badly?

The anarchist objection

The strongest challenge, and an answer that mentions it is stronger than one that does not.

Robert Paul Wolff argued that there is no political obligation at all, and he argued it from autonomy. A person's primary moral duty is to decide for themselves what they ought to do, taking responsibility for the decision. Authority requires them to do what they are told because they are told. The two cannot be reconciled: to accept authority is to surrender the very responsibility that makes one a moral agent. Wolff's conclusion is philosophical anarchism: the state may be useful, and it may even be entitled to use force, but no citizen has a duty to obey it.

The usual reply is that the argument proves too much. It would abolish the obligation to keep a promise, to follow a doctor's advice, or to accept a court's decision in a dispute you are party to, since all of these involve doing something because somebody else determined it. And it takes no account of the fact that in a plural society people disagree, so that either some authority decides or nothing is decided.

A worked example

Sameer is a shopkeeper in Thane. A municipal rule requires him to keep his shop shut one day a week, and the day allotted to his street is Tuesday. He thinks the rule is silly and that Wednesday would suit the street better.

Does he have a legal duty to shut on Tuesday? Yes, and it is settled by reading the rule.

Does he have an independent moral duty? No. Nothing about Tuesday is morally superior to Wednesday.

Does he have a political obligation? That is the whole question of this module. If he does, he ought to shut on Tuesday even though the rule is arbitrary and even though he would not have chosen it, and the reason must be something about the municipality's title to decide rather than about Tuesdays.

Notice the four problems appearing in a small case. Generality: the same argument must cover the rule he likes about weights and measures. Particularity: he owes this to Thane's municipality and not to another town's. Content independence: he complies because of who made the rule, not because he is persuaded. And prima facie: if the rule required him to shut on the one day his medicines could be delivered to a dying relative, most theories would say the duty is outweighed.

Distinctions that carry marks

What political obligation is NOT

It is not the same as obedience. People obey out of fear, habit and convenience. Obligation is about whether they ought to, and a population that obeys perfectly may have no obligation at all.

It is not the same as loyalty or patriotism. Those are attitudes; this is a duty, and one may have it without any warm feeling towards the state.

It is not absolute. Nearly every theory treats it as capable of being outweighed, which is why civil disobedience is a coherent idea rather than a contradiction.

It is not answered by the sanction. The threat explains compliance and not obligation, which is the first thing this chapter separates.

Quick revision

1. Political obligation is the moral duty to obey the state's law because the state imposed it.
2. The sanction cannot answer it (that would make the state a robber) and "because it is the law" is circular.
3. Three duties: legal, moral, and political obligation, which is the moral duty to comply with legal duties.
4. Features: moral, owed to a particular state, content independent, prima facie and general.
5. Four things a theory must explain: generality, particularity, content independence, and universality within the state.
6. Wolff's philosophical anarchism: autonomy requires deciding for oneself, authority requires doing as told; therefore no obligation. Reply: it proves too much, and disagreement has to be settled somehow.

Test yourself

1. Define political obligation and explain why the question is not answered by the existence of sanctions. It is the moral duty of a citizen to obey the laws and commands of their own state because that state imposed them. Sanctions cannot answer it because they explain compliance rather than duty: a robber with a gun also creates consequences, and nobody says one has a duty to hand over the money. If the state's claim rested on nothing but its capacity to punish, it would differ from the robber only in scale, and the words "ought" and "duty" would do no work at all.

2. Distinguish political obligation from legal duty and from moral duty. Legal duty is what the law requires and is settled by reading the law. Moral duty is what one ought to do all things considered and is settled by argument. Political obligation is the moral duty to comply with legal duties because one's own state imposed them, so it lies across the other two. A helmet rule illustrates all three: the statute creates the legal duty, an independent moral duty not to endanger dependants may exist anyway, and political obligation is the further claim that one ought to comply even if one thinks the rule pointless.

3. What does it mean to say the obligation is content independent, and why does it matter? That the duty attaches because of the source of the command rather than because of what it says. It matters because an obligation to obey only the rules one approves of is not an obligation at all: one would be following one's own judgment, and the state would be adding nothing. Driving on the left is the clean test, since nothing is morally superior about the left, so if any duty exists it comes from the Indian rule and nothing else.

4. What are the four things a theory of political obligation must explain? Generality, why the duty covers the whole body of law rather than the approved parts. Particularity, why it is owed to this state rather than to any well-governed state. Content independence, why the source binds rather than the merits. And universality within the state, whether it binds everybody, including those never asked and those the state has treated badly. Most theories fail on one of these, and identifying which is how they are evaluated.

5. State Wolff's anarchist argument and one reply to it. Wolff argued that a person's primary moral duty is autonomy, deciding for themselves what they ought to do and taking responsibility for it, while authority requires them to act because they are told to. The two cannot be reconciled, so no citizen has any duty to obey, though the state may still be useful. The standard reply is that the argument proves too much: it would equally abolish the duty to keep a promise or to accept a court's decision in one's own case, and it takes no account of the fact that in a society where people disagree, either some authority decides or nothing is decided at all.