What Political Obligation Is

In one line

Political obligation is the duty to obey the state, and the question is not whether the state can make you obey but whether you ought to.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: political obligation is the moral duty of a citizen to obey the laws and commands of the state to which they belong, and the problem of political obligation is the question whether such a duty exists at all, on what ground it rests, to whom it is owed, how far it extends, and what may be done when it conflicts with the citizen's other duties.

Why the question is worth asking

A student's first reaction is that the question answers itself: you obey because it is the law and because there are consequences if you do not. Neither answer touches the problem.

"There are consequences" is not an obligation. A robber who points a gun at you creates consequences, and nobody says you have a duty to hand over your money. If the state's claim on you were nothing more than the ability to punish, then the state would be a very large robber, and the words "ought" and "duty" would have no work to do. This is exactly why Module I spent so long separating power from authority: the distinction was made in order to make this question possible.

"Because it is the law" is circular. Asking why you should obey the law is not answered by saying that the law says you must. The question is precisely why that saying binds you.

So the problem stands, and it is a real one. A law student will meet it in the first week of jurisprudence and will meet it again every time a client asks whether a rule must be complied with while a challenge to it is pending.

Three duties that are not the same

This is where marks are lost, so it is worth being slow.

Legal duty. What the law requires, enforceable by the courts. Whether you have a legal duty is settled by reading the statute.

Moral duty. What you ought to do, all things considered. Whether you have a moral duty is settled by argument, not by a statute.

Political obligation. The moral duty to comply with legal duties because they are imposed by the state you belong to. It sits across the other two, and that is its whole difficulty.

Take a rule requiring helmets. The legal duty comes from the statute. There may be an independent moral duty not to endanger yourself and your dependants, which would exist whether or not any statute said so. Political obligation is neither of those. It is the further claim that even if you thought the rule pointless you ought to comply, because your state enacted it.