POLITICAL OBLIGATION

Political- Polis (city-states)

The Human nature or essence of man
Man is a political animal
Politics is the essence of social existence
diversity and scarcity

HUMAN NATURE AND

POWER
Power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely
We have learned by sad experience that it
is the nature and disposition of almost all
men, as soon as they get a little authority,
as they suppose, they will immediately
begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE

STATE AND THE CITIZENS
CARE
COOPERATION
CONFLICTIVE
What are the manifestations of these?

Obligation- obligatus/obligare( tied to/ to tie)

something that binds people to an engagement or
performance of what is commanded
To have an obligation is to be bound to do or not do
something, as the etymological connection to the Latin
ligare indicates; and to have a political obligation is to
be bound to obey the law.

DEFINITION OF POLITICAL
OBLIGATION
The duty of the citizens to acknowledge the
authority of the state to obey its laws (Heywood)

it is an obligation of the subject towards the

sovereign

it is the obligation of the individual to each other

as enforce by a political superior

DEFINITION OF POLITICAL
OBLIGATION
An obligation concerning the duties of political
leaders and citizen together who, as collectively,
are responsible for the political system as a whole.
Political responsibility requires not only the
performance of correct actions but also a will to
uphold and improve the political system and a
desire to perform successfully where the right
actions are not prescribe by law.

BEYOND LEGAL
OBLIGATIONS: IT INCLUDES
DUTIES OF CITIZENS

Volunteer for war service

exercise suffrage

raise one's children as responsible citizen

disobedience

POLITICAL VS. LEGAL

OBLIGATION
Political is the broader term, according to Parekh,
and someone who has a truly political obligation
will owe her polity more than mere obedience to its
laws. Such a person will have a positive duty to
take steps to secure the safety and advance the
interests of her country.

POLITICAL VS. LEGAL

OBLIGATION
The question of whether we have a duty to obey
the law is really a matter of civil obligation that
is, the obligation to respect and uphold the
legitimately constituted civil authority that
entails legal obligations to obey the laws enacted
by the civil authority rather than political
obligation

Exhortations to do our civic duty typically urge us

to do more than merely obey the law. These
exhortations would have us vote in elections and
be well-informed voters; buy government bonds;
limit our use of water and other scarce
resources; donate blood, service, or money
(beyond what we owe in taxes) in times of crisis;
and generally contribute in an active way to the
common good.

In general, political obligations are systemic and

legal obligations specific. The problem of political
obligation is the problem of determining whether
there is a ground or justification for obedience to the
law not this or that law in particular but the law as
such. Political philosophers have worried less about
whether this or that law is binding than about the
conditions under which one has an obligation to obey
the laws in general

Legal obligation, need not be a moral obligation.

According to legal positivists, in fact, a law will be
morally binding only when it requires those subject
to it to do what morality independently requires.
Thus the laws that prohibit robbery, murder, and
other acts that are mala in se that is, inherently
evil are laws that people have both a moral and a
legal obligation to obey; while laws that prohibit acts
that are otherwise morally indifferent (mala
prohibita), such as driving on the left-hand side of
the road, are merely legal obligations

Political and legal obligations are related, in short, but

they are not the same thing. A political obligation is
a moral duty that only a citizen or perhaps a
permanent resident can have, for it is an obligation
that attaches only to members of a polity. Legal
obligations, by contrast, attach themselves to
anyone who is subject to the pertinent law or laws,
including tourists who owe no allegiance to the
country they happen to be visiting.

FACTORS THAT BROUGTH

ABOUT POLITICAL
OBLIGATION

Why should you obey the law and support the

established government?

1.External/Prudential and non-rational:

You ought to obey the law because you will suffer
if you do not
2.Internal/Moral:
the moral function or object served by law

PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS
When (if at all) and for what reasons we are morally
required to be good citizens?
When (if at all) and for what reasons state and/or
their governments possess moral right to rule?
What could ground the deeply normative relation
between state and citizen which entitles the state to
impute duties to citizens and to require obedience
from them in response to the laws it promulgates and
the commands it issues?

WHY SHOULD I OBEY THE STATE?

Plato in Crito on obeying the law

If given the opportunity, should you escape an impending
imposition of death penalty to you by your State?
If we leave here without the citys permission, are we
mistreating people whom we should least mistreat?
Do you think it possible for a city not to be destroyed if the
verdicts of its courts have no force but are nullified and set at
naught b private individuals?

THEORIES OF POLITICAL
OBLIGATION
1.Consent ( agreement and commitment as a
resident of Athens)
2.Gratitude (owe his birth, nurturance, education,
etc. to the laws of Athens)
3.Fairness (mistreatment of fellow citizens )
4. Utility (laws and the State need force to avoid

destruction of the community)

DIVINE RIGHT THEORY

Paul's Epistle to the Romans (13:12): For there is no
authority except from God, and those that exist have
been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the
authorities resists what God has appointed, and those
who resist will incur judgment.
(Matthew 22:1522) . That of Caesar and that of God

DIVINE RIGHT THEORY:

IMPLICATIONS
For there is no authority except from God, and
those that exist have been instituted by God.
Therefore he who resists the authorities resists
what God has appointed, and those who resist will
incur judgment.

DIVINE RIGHT THEORY:

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS
First, it presupposes the existence of divinity of some sort;
and second, the commands of the divine being(s) are not
always clear.
One such response was to distinguish the divinely ordained
office from the officer who occupied it.
According to Martin Luther and others who drew this
distinction, Christians may not actively resist their rulers,
but they must disobey them when the rulers commands
are contrary to Gods.

SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) and Locke's Second Treatise
of Government (1690)
Hobbes Social contract theory established the
authority of anyone who was able to wield and hold
power.
sovereignty by institutions/acquisition

The subjects consent to obey those who have

effective power over them, whether the
subject has a choice in who holds power or
not.
The upshot of Hobbess theory seems to be
that we have an obligation to obey anyone
who can maintain order.

SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

Locke The free and equal individuals in the state
of nature establish government as a way of
overcoming the inconveniencies of that state.
naturally free and equal individuals agree to
form themselves into a political society, under
law, and in the establishment of the government

Locke argued for a right of revolution

on the ground that overthrowing the
government will not immediately
return the people to the state of
nature.

SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY:

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS
historical or hypothetical contract
express or explicit/ tacit or implied
contract

UTILITARIANISM
Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill
to maximize expected utility, or promote the
greatest happiness of the greatest number

On utilitarian grounds, the state is justified

if and only if it produces more happiness
than any alternative. Whether we consent
to the state is irrelevant. What matters is
whether it makes the members of society,
in total, happier than they would be without
it. (Wolff, 2006)

Hume The obligation to obey the law

derives not from consent or contract but
from the straightforward utility of a
system of laws that enables people to
pursue their interests peacefully and
conveniently.

OBLIGATION AND DUTY

some philosophers have uncovered differences
between obligations and duties, the most important
of which is that obligations must be voluntarily
undertaken or incurred, but duties need not be
(Brandt 1964; Hart 1958)
Obligation: promise/contract
Duty: charity/tell the truth

OBLIGATION AND DUTY

John Rawls argues that most citizens of a
reasonably just political society have no
general obligation to obey its laws, even
though they do have a natural duty to
support just institutions a duty that has the
general effect of requiring them to obey.

POLITICAL OBLIGATION AS A
MORAL OBLIGATION
T. H. Green: the problem of political obligation is a
moral problem, and the obligation in question is a
kind of moral obligation
Anyone who has an obligation to obey the law thus
has a moral duty to discharge, at least when there
are no overriding moral considerations that justify
disobedience.

POLITICAL OBLIGATION=
MORAL OBLIGATION
Is there a moral obligation to obey the State?
Is there a moral relationship between
stakeholders?
- Presumption: the state cannot be evil or do wrong
in dealing with the citizens and that the citizens
cannot be immoral and opportunistic in their
dealings with the state (ceteris paribus)

1. ABSOLUTE MORAL DUTY

/CONTENT-NEUTRAL
If there is an obligation or duty to obey the law as
such, simply because it is the law, then it is an
obligation to obey no matter what the content of a
particular law may be.
Dura lex sed lex
Mala in se vs. mala prohibita

CONTENT-NEUTRAL:
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
Whether the obligation to obey the law
outweighs, overrides, or excludes
competing moral consideration.

2. PRIMA FACIE/PRO TANTO

OR DEFEASIBLE
Lex injusta non est lex/ Pro tanto/other things
considered
X has prima facie obligation to obey the law
unless by pro tanto X has strong moral reason
not to obey the law

PRIMA FACIE/ PROTANTO:

IMPLICATION
Someone who is under a political obligation thus
should presume that she has a duty to obey the
laws of her polity, and she should consider
disobedience only when it seems that obeying a
particular law may be, on balance, the wrong
course of conduct.

PRIMA FACIE/PRO TANTO:

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS
Whether one ought to obey the law in a particular case is
something that must be decided (pro tanto) all things
considered that is, in light of other moral considerations
that may arise. But what kind of an obligation is it that
may be overridden or outweighed in this manner?
Under what circumstances can a political obligation
immoral?

PRIMA FACIE/PRO TANTO=

GENERAL OBLIGATION
To have a political obligation, then, is not to have
an obligation to obey laws a, b, and c, but perhaps
not law d; it is to have a general obligation to obey
the laws of one's polity as such. This general
obligation, though, will not always require
obedience to particular laws when all things are
considered.

THE PROBLEM IN POLITICAL

OBLIGATION
Clash between the individuals claim to self-governance or
autonomy and the right of the state to claim obedience
Knowles recognizes the traditional problem of political
obligation as being a clear tension ... between two
claims the claim of the state to allegiance, authority
and obedience, and the claim of the citizen to autonomy,
to moral self-governance

3.GENUINE POLITICAL
OBLIGATION OR AMORAL
Another response is to maintain that political
obligations may be overridden because they are
not (fully) moral obligations. In her recent book on
the subject, Margaret Gilbert (2006) argues that
political obligations fall between the dictates of
morality, on the one hand, and one's inclinations
and self-interest, on the other.

POLITICAL OBLIGATION VS.

MORAL OBLIGATION
Political necessity overrides moral norms and
obligations
responsible politicians must get their hands dirty
and commit moral crimes
the evil that necessary would have to be done
cannot be morally wrong because it would be the
object of a political obligations
political obligation is amoral

ESSENTIAL
CHARACTERISTICS OF
POLITICAL OBLIGATION

1. Involves obligation of an honest and public

service

2. Involves the case of political legitimacy and

effectiveness
3. Involves the case of resistance to authority

POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND

EFFECTIVENESS

Legitimacy includes the capacity to produce and

maintain a belief that the existing political
institutions, or forms, are the most appropriate for
the society.
Legitimacy is the foundation of political power in as
much as it is exercised both with a consciousness
on governments part that it has a right to govern
and with some recognition by the governed of that
right.

Political legitimacy is a virtue of political

institutions and of the decisionsabout
laws, policies, and candidates for political
officemade within them.

Some associate legitimacy with the justification of

coercive power and with the creation of political
authority. Others associate it with the
justification, or at least the sanctioning, of
existing political authority. Authority stands for
a right to rulea right to issue commands and,
possibly, to enforce these commands using
coercive power. An additional question is whether
legitimate political authority is understood to entail
political obligations or not.

POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND

EFFECTIVENESS

Effectiveness is judged according to how

well a political system performs its basic
functions as measured by the reactions of
most of the people and their powerful groups.

DEFINITIONS AND
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS
What is legitimacy: descriptive or normative
prescriptive?
How is it related with political authority/power?
Does it entails political obligation or not?
What are the requirements for legitimacy? When are
political institutions and the decisions made within
them legitimate: procedural/means or the end/ the
substantive/quality of the values realized?
Does it demand democracy or not?

DESCRIPTIVE DEFINITION OF
LEGITIMACY (SOCIOLOGICAL)
Legitimacy, which is understood as
acceptance of authority and the need to obey
its command, refers to peoples belief about
political authority and ,sometimes, political
obligation. Belief is the basis of every system
of authority and willingness to obey.

According to Weber, a political regime is legitimate

when participants have certain beliefs or faith
(Legitimittsglaube) in regard to it: the basis of
every system of authority, and correspondingly of
every kind of willingness to obey, is a belief, a belief
by virtue of which persons exercising authority are
lent prestige
Weber distinguishes among three main sources of
legitimacyunderstood as both the acceptance of
authority and of the need to obey its commands.

WEBERS THREE TYPES OF

LEGITIMACY
1. Rational-legal it is said to rest on a belief in
the legality of normative rules and the right of
those elevated to the authority under such rules
to issue commands.
Modern
Based on rules and processes
Bureaucracy

Authority established through a process

Procedural Authority
Elections
Government Hiring Processes
Rules for decisions:
Rules for a trial
Rules for law-making in Congress
Rules for getting a marriage license, etc.

Authority is bounded
Limited to a particular context

Relationships are specific and

bounded
Limited to a context
Limited to a time
Limited within specific range of action

Strengths:
Predictable
Orderly
Transparent
All are equal
Relatively little chance for abuse
Protects subordinates rights

Problems:
Slow
Rigid and inflexible
Impersonal
Processes may overwhelm
goals
Stupid outcomes may
result
Quick obvious solutions
blocked

Typical of modern, democratic

governments
Focuses on procedures more than
outcomes
Emphasizes equality
Both protects and frustrates most
citizens

2. Traditional authority It is derived from an

established belief in the sanctity of immemorial
traditions and the legitimacy of the status of those
exercising authority over them.
Old Times
Inherited authority

Authority is inherited
Leaders are leaders because they are:
Divine right of Kings
Village elders
Inherited priesthood lineage (Old
Testament)
Usually has patterns of inheritance
Stable transitions

Authority is diffuse and unbounded

No particular limits firmly established
No time frame limitations
Relationships are whole-person
Leader not limited to particular aspects of life
Leader may tread on private matters
Relationships are reciprocal but asymmetrical
Mutual obligations of benevolence and loyalty

Potential Strengths:
Stable and orderly
Flexibility, not bound by excessive
rules
Generates strong positive
associations
Right doesnt get blocked by
process or rules

Potential Problems
Right seen only from leaders perspective
Fickle
No way to remove incompetent leaders
No room for exemplary talent to rise
Unlimited or unrestrained power leaves
potential for abuse wide open

3. Charismatic authority It rests on the devotion to

the specific and exceptional sanctity, heroism or
exemplary character of an individual person and of the
normative patterns of order revealed or ordained by him.
Charisma, literally meaning gift of grace, in order that it
may become a permanent structure, would have to
assimilate itself to modern institutions.
Special, Personal, Revolutionary
Based on individual leaders special characteristics

Charisma vs. charisma

Personal characteristics of leader
Super-human
Uniquely able to resolve grand problems
The Charismatic leader is the solution
Special relation to deity (sometimes)

Followers believe leader to be infallible

Leader can command ANYTHING
Violate traditional values
Change everything, even beliefs
Do things I used to consider evil
This is MORE than just a strong, dynamic leader.

CHARISMATIC LEADERS
Only recognizable if:
Demand dramatic, life-altering changes
Require followers to change dramatically
Even doing things they previously believed to
be morally wrong
Followers accept and follow those demands
Some leaders may have this ability, but if they
dont test it, we dont know

HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?

Major crisis either personal or societal
Charismatic proposes DIAGNOSIS
Diagnosis rings true to potential followers
Charismatic presents SOLUTION
Solution relies on Charismatics ability
Solution will bring salvation, resolve problems
Solution requires total obedience and major
change

CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY
Potential Strengths
Rapid change is possible
Old, corrupt systems can be overthrown
A new world is possible
May really solve major problems

CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY
Potential problems
New world is worse than the old
Leader is an idiot and everything crashes
Grand Schemes are OK, but not details
Leader abuses authority followers victimized
Transitions of authority very dicey
Leaders usually very jealous of subordinate
leaders
Leaders resist routinization
Collapse at leaders demise

WEBERS 3 AUTHORITY TYPES:

REVIEW
Rational legal
Modern, procedures, limits, common in
democratic government
Traditional
Old monarchy, family, sometimes religion
Charismatic
Rare, Revolutionary, Leader is superhuman and
unlimited

NORMATIVE DEFINITION
(PHILOSOPHICAL
PERSPECTIVE)

In contrast to Weber's descriptive concept, the

normative concept of political legitimacy refers to
some benchmark of acceptability or justification of
political power or authority andpossiblyobligation.

On the broadest view, legitimacy both explains

why the use of political power by a particular
bodya state, a government, or a democratic
collective, for exampleis permissible and why
there is a pro tanto moral duty to obey its
commands. On this view, if the conditions for
legitimacy are not met, political institutions
exercise power unjustifiably and the commands
they might produce do then not entail any
obligation to obey

Legitimacy is linked to the moral justification

not the creationof political authority. Political
bodies such as states may be effective, or de facto,
authorities, without being legitimate. They claim the
right to rule and to create obligations to be obeyed,
and as long as these claims are met with sufficient
acquiescence, they are authoritative. Legitimate
authority, on this view, differs from merely
effective or de facto authority in that it actually
holds the right to rule and creates political
obligations (e.g. Raz 1986).

Legitimate authority is not sufficient to create

political obligations. The thought is that a
political authority (such as a state) may be
permitted to issue commands that citizens are
not obligated to obey (Dworkin 1986: 191).
Based on a view of this sort, some have argued
that legitimate authority only gives rise to
political obligations if additional normative
conditions are satisfied (e.g. Wellman 1996;
Edmundson 1998; Buchanan 2002).

 Sometimes normative concept of legitimacy is

equated with justice. Only just state is morally
acceptable and legitimate. Some explicitly define
legitimacy as a criterion of minimal justice (e.g.
Hampton 1998; Buchanan 2002)

HYBRID PERSPECTIVE
Some authors argued that the concept of legitimacy
combines descriptive and normative elements.
According to Beetham, a power relationship is not
legitimate because people believe in its legitimacy,
but because it can be justified in terms of their belief
it is not just about the actual legitimacy of a
particular political institution, but about the
justifiability of this political institution

In Jrgen Habermas' words : Every general

theory of justification remains peculiarly
abstract in relation to the historical forms of
legitimate domination. Is there an alternative
to this historical injustice of general theories, on
the one hand, and the standardlessness of mere
historical understanding, on the other?

According to an opposing view (e.g. Simmons

2001),

In the hybrid view, the difference between effective or

de facto authority and legitimate authority depends on
whether or not authority is acceptednot on whether it
ought to be accepted (e.g. Simmons 2001). Accordingly
political authority may be morally justified
without being legitimate, but only legitimate
authority generates political obligations.

THE FUNCTIONS OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY

What is the relationship of political legitimacy with

political authority and political obligation?

LEGITIMACY AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF

POLITICAL AUTHORITY

The normative concept of political legitimacy is

often seen as related to the justification of
authority. These two however are two different
concepts. Effective or de facto authority can exist
without being legitimate.

JOHN LOCKE
Political authority pre-existed in the state of nature
and therefore not created by the state, whereas
legitimacy is a concept specific to a state.
Legitimacy of political authority in the state depends
on whether the transfer of authority has undergone
the right way that is, express or tacit consentoriginating and joining consent- is given by
individuals

VIOLATION OF THE NATURAL

LAW
Political regime is legitimate if it respects the
constraints of natural law (a state of equal rights,
all being kings), if it oversteps the boundaries of
such law then it ceases to be legitimate and therefore
there is no longer an obligation to obey its command.
For Lockeunlike for Hobbespolitical authority is
thus not absolute. In fact, absolute political authority
is necessarily illegitimate because it suspends the
natural law.

HOBBES
Political authority is created in the social contract
(not existing in the state of nature) to ensure selfpreservation which is threatened in the state of
nature.
Legitimate authority depends on the ability of the
state (the sovereign- institutional or acquisitioned)
to protect its citizens.

Once a sovereign is in place, everyone is obliged

to obey him and this holds as long as the
sovereign ensures protection as Hobbes believes
that the natural right to self-preservation
cannot be relinquished.

Jean Hampton offers an elegant contemporary

explication of Hobbes' view that political authority
does not pre-exist in individuals. According to her,
political authority is invented by a group of people
who perceive that this kind of special authority is
necessary for the collective solution of certain
problems of interaction in their territory and whose
process of state creation essentially involves designing
the content and structure of that authority so that it
meets what they take to be their needs

ROUSSEAU
Legitimate political authority is created by
convention, reached within a civil state
suggesting that legitimacy arise from the
democratic justification of the laws of the civil
state.
Legitimacy justifies the states exercise of coercive
power and creates an obligation to obey

An attempt to rule without legitimacy is an attempt to

exercise power not authority. The exercise of mere
power is enslaving people and therefore not freeing
them of the serfdom as that of in the state of nature.
Rousseau contended that tacit consent is not
sufficient for political legitimacy. Without citizens'
active participation in the justification of a state's
laws, there is no legitimacy

JOHN SIMMON
States authority depends on its moral
defensibility.
Political authority thus justified is necessary but
not sufficient for political legitimacy and hence for
generating political obligations. Whether or not
one has obligation to obey the states specific
commands depends on ones actual consent.

JOSEPH RAZ
Joseph Raz links legitimacy to the justification of
political authority. According to Raz, political
authority is just a special case of the more general
concept of authority. He defines authority in
relation to a claimof a person or an agencyto
generate what he calls pre-emptive reasons.
Such reasons replace other reasons for action that
people might have

When is effective or de facto authority legitimate?

According to Raz, it must be justified in the following way
(the normal justification thesis): The normal way to
establish that a person has authority over another
involves showing that the alleged subject is likely to
better comply with the reasons which apply to him
(other than the alleged authoritative directive) if he
accepts the directives of the alleged authority as
authoritatively binding and tries to follow them, rather
than by trying to follow the reasons which apply to him
directly

The normal justification thesis provides that a

legitimate authority generates a duty to be obeyed.
Because (legitimate) authority is conceived as what
serves those governed, Raz calls it the service
conception of authority. Note that even though
legitimate authority is defined as a special case of
effective authority, only the former is appropriately
described as a service conception. Illegitimatebut
effectiveauthority does not serve those governed; it
only claims to do so.

WILLIAM EDMUNDSON
Warranty thesis: If being an X entails claiming to F,
then being a legitimate X entails truly claiming to F.
Being an X here stands for a state, or an authority.
And to F stands for to create a duty to be obeyed,
for example. The idea expressed by the warranty thesis
is that legitimacy morally justifies an independently
existing authority such that the claims of the authority
become moral obligations.

LESLIE GREEN
She rejects a coercion-based definition of
legitimacy. She argues that the use of coercion does
not constitute the authority of the state. Coercion, on
this view, is only a means that states use to secure
their authority: Coercion threats provide
secondary, reinforcing motivation when the
political order fails in its primary normative
technique of authoritative guidance.

EMMANUEL KANT
Like Hobbes political authority is created by the establishment
of political institutions, although some form of individual
authority (a moral authority as a rational being) exists in the
pre-civil social state.
Individuals have a moral obligation to form a civil state
and as rational and moral beings they can recognized
this duty (not a voluntary act)
The establishment of a state with the coercive power it
exercises is in itself an end (that each ought to have). The
establishment of a state is a necessary step towards moral
order (ethical commonwealth)

It helps people conform to certain rules by

eliminating what today would be called the freeriding problem or the problem of partial
compliance. By creating a coercive order of public
legal justice, a great step is taken toward morality
(though it is not yet a moral step), toward being
attached to this concept of duty even for its own
sake

The civil state, according to Kant, establishes the rights

necessary to secure equal freedom. Unlike for Locke
and his contemporary followers, however, coercive
power is not a secondary feature of the civil state,
necessary to back up laws. According to Kant,
coercion is part of the idea of rights. The thought
can be explained as follows. Coercion is defined as a
restriction of the freedom to pursue one's own ends.
Any right of a personindependently of whether it is
respected or has been violatedimplies a restriction
for others.

Kant, unlike Hobbes, recognizes the difference

between legitimate and effective authority. For the
head of the civil state is under an obligation to obey
public reason and to enact only laws to which all
individuals could consent. If he violates this obligation,
however, he still holds authority, even if his authority
ceases to be legitimate. This view is best explained in
relation to Kant's often criticized position on the right
to revolution. Kant famously denied that there is
a right to revolution.

Kant stresses that while a peopleas united in the

civil stateis sovereign, its individual members are
under the obligation to obey the head of the state thus
established. This obligation is such that it is
incompatible with a right to revolution. A right to
revolution would be in contradiction with the idea that
individuals are bound by public law, but without the idea
of citizens being bound by public law, there cannot be a
civil stateonly anarchy.

Kant's position implies that the obligation of

individuals to obey a head of state is not
conditioned upon the ruler's performance. In
particular, the obligation to obey does not
cease when the laws are unjust.

Kant's position on the right to revolution may suggest

that he regards political authority as similarly absolute
as Hobbes. But Kant stresses that the head of state is
bound by the commands of public reason. This is
manifest in his insistence on freedom of the pen:
a citizen must have, with the approval of the ruler
himself, the authorization to make known publicly his
opinions about what it is in the ruler's arrangements
that seems to him to be a wrong against the
commonwealth

Coercive power is not just a means as a secondary

feature of the state but it is constitutive of the state.
Coercion is the restriction of freedom to pursue ones
own ends. The state establishes the rights necessary to
secure equal freedom.
Legitimate authority is when a head of the civil state
obey public reason and to enact laws to which all
individuals can consent (social contract). But even there
is a violation of this requirement (therefore illegitimate) ,
people are still obliged to obey the authority of the ruler.

Hamptons theory links the authority of the state to

its ability to enforce a solution to coordination and
cooperation problems. Coercion is the necessary
feature that enables the state to provide an effective
solution to these problems, and the entitlement to
use coercion is what constitutes the authority
of the state. The entitlement to use coercion
distinguishes such minimally legitimate political
authority from a mere use of power.

POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL

OBLIGATION

Dominant view: political authority creates political

obligation
Locke: when an individual consented to establish
the state through the social contract then he put
himself under obligation to submit to the
determination of the majority.

 Other views: what constitute legitimate authority is

distinct from the question of what political obligations
people have.
Ronald Dworkin: if an authority is legitimate, there
is a general obligation to obey its command but not
an obligation to obey in each case particular decisions
of that authority.
> Political obligation is a normative concept in its own
right. There are associative obligations that arise not
from legitimate political authority but directly from
being citizen

 Edmundson: while legitimacy establishes the right to

rule of political institutions, it does not create even a
prima facie duty to obey their command. The moral
duty to obey command arises only if additional
conditions are met.

John Simmons: justified authority does not entail

legitimate authority, and while the latter does create
political obligations the former does not. There is no
content-independent duty to obey the state.

Robert Paul Wolff: There cannot be such a

general obligation to obey the state. States are
necessarily illegitimate because individuals are
autonomous that cannot be under general
content-independent, obligation to subject their
will to the will of someone else.

SOURCES OF POLITICAL
LEGITIMACY
Defines which political institutions and which
decisions made within them are acceptable, and, in
some cases, what kind of obligations people who
are governed by these institutions incur, there is
the question what grounds this normativity. This
section briefly reviews different accounts that have
been given of the sources of legitimacy.

CONSENT
While there is a strong voluntarist line of thought
in Christian political philosophy, it was in the 17 th
century that consent came to be seen as the main
source of political legitimacy. The works of Hugo
Grotius, Hobbes, and Samuel Pufendorf tend to be
seen as the main turning point that eventually led
to the replacement of natural law and divine
authority theories of legitimacy

LOCKE states every one may chuse which he

pleases of all those Sorts; so a People may chuse
what Form of Government they please: Neither is
the Right which the Sovereign has over his
Subjects to be measured by this or that Form, of
which divers Men have different Opinions, but by
the Extent of the Will of those who conferred it
upon him It was Locke's version of social contract
theory that elevated consent to the main source of the

Raz .helpfully distinguishes among three ways in

which the relation between consent and legitimate
political authority may be understood (1995: 356): (i)
consent of those governed is a necessary condition for
the legitimacy of political authority; (ii) consent is not
directly a condition for legitimacy, but the conditions
for the legitimacy of authority are such that only
political authority that enjoys the consent of those
governed can meet them; (iii) the conditions of
legitimate political authority are such that those
governed by that authority are under an obligation to

Locke and his contemporary followers such as Nozick (1974) or

Simmons (2001), but also Rousseau and his followers defend a
version of (i)the most typical form that consent theories take.
Versions of (ii) appeal to those who reject actual consent as a
basis for legitimacy, as they only regard consent given under
ideal conditions as binding. Theories of hypothetical consent,
such as those articulated by Kant or Rawls, fall into this
category. Such theories view political authority as legitimate
only if those governed could consent under certain ideal
conditions

2. BENEFICIAL
CONSEQUENCES
Jeremy Bentham rejects the Hobbesian idea that
political authority is created by a social contract.
According to Bentham, it is the state that creates the
possibility of binding contracts. The problem of
legitimacy that the state faces is which of its laws are
justified. Bentham proposes that legitimacy depends on
whether a law contributes to the happiness of the
citizens.

Thomasius differs from the utilitarians in his

attempt to identify a distinctively politicalnot
moral or legalsource of legitimacy. He developed
the idea of decorum into a theory of how people
should relate to one another in the political context.
Decorum is best described as a principle of civic
mutuality You treat others as you would expect
them to treat you.

PUBLIC REASON AND

DEMOCRATIC APPROVAL
John Rawls: in the light of what reasons and
values can citizens legitimately exercise
coercive power over one another? political
power is legitimate only when it is exercise in
accordance with a constitution the essentials of
which all citizens, as reasonable and rational, can
endorse in the light of their common reason

This conception of legitimacy is connected to his

conception of justice . The common basis between
justice and legitimacy is formed by the fundamental
ideas that underlie Rawls' theory of justice as
fairness and that he sees as implicit in the
political culture of democratic societies: the idea
of society as a fair system of cooperation, the idea of
citizens as free and equal persons, the idea of the
basic structure, and the idea of political justification.

Public reason is described as the reason of free

and equal citizens, it is the reason of the public; its
subject is the public good concerning questions of
fundamental political justice, which questions are of
two kinds, constitutional essentials and matters of
basic justice; and its nature and content are public,
being expressed in public reasoning by a family of
reasonable conceptions of political justice
reasonably thought to satisfy the criterion of
reciprocity

POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND DEMOCRACY

1. Democratic Instrumentalism
Democratic instrumentalism is the view that
democratic decision-making procedures are at
best a means for political legitimacy, and whether
or not legitimacy requires democracy depends on
the outcomes they bring about.

 Joseph Raz : Only the quality of the outcomes a

particular political regime generates is relevant for
political legitimacy.
Richard Arneson and Steven Wall: the
legitimacy of political institutions and the decisions
made within them depends on how closely they
approximate the ideal egalitarian distribution.

2. Pure Proceduralist Conceptions of

Democratic Legitimacy
Buchanan : views that democratic forms of
political organization are necessary for political
legitimacy, independently of their instrumental
value.
Kenneth May: On an account of aggregative
democracy, pure proceduralism implies that
democratic decisions are legitimate if the
aggregative process is deemed fair.

 Thomas Christiano: a deliberative account of

democracy, legitimacy depends, at least in part, on
the process of public deliberation, democratic
discussion, deliberation, and decision-making under
certain conditions are what make the outcomes
legitimate for each person.

3. Rational Proceduralist Conceptions of

Democratic Legitimacy
Rational proceduralist conceptions of democratic
legitimacy add conditions that refer to the
quality of outcomes to those that apply to the
procedural properties of democratic decisionmaking

 Kenneth Arrow: Suggests that the possible

irrationality of majority rule undermines its
legitimacy, even if it respects certain procedural
values. His view implies that democratic
legitimacy only obtains if the outcomes
themselves satisfy certain quality conditions
specifically, he postulated that they should satisfy
certain rationality axioms.

 Habermas: Deliberative politics acquires its

legitimating force from the discursive structure of an
opinion- and will-formation that can fulfill its socially
integrative function only because citizens expect its
results to have a reasonable quality
Phillip Pettit: Democratic decision is legitimate if it
has been made in a decision-making process that
seeks to approximate, as far as possible, the ideal
outcome.

LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL

COSMOPOLITANISM
Political cosmopolitanism is the view that national
communities are not the exclusive source of political
legitimacy in the global realm
Problem of international legitimacy: When should
nation states recognize another political entity as a
legitimate? And what are appropriate sanctions
against entities that do not meet the legitimacy
criteria?

1. Political Nationalism
It is the view that only the political
institutions of nation states can overcome
the legitimacy problem and hence be a
source of political legitimacy.

2. Political Cosmopolitanism
Charles Beitz: (on state-centered approach):
international society is understood as domestic
society writ large, with states playing the roles
occupied by persons in domestic society. States, not
persons, are the subjects of international morality,
and the rules that regulate their behavior are
supposed to preserve a peaceful order of sovereign
states

Allen Buchanan: (on people centered- approach):

The second approach takes features of individuals
their interests or their rightsas basic for legitimacy.
State consent is neither necessary nor sufficient for
legitimacy. There is need for an independent
international standard of minimal justice to obtain
legitimacy.

International law recognizes many obligations

as binding even without the consent of acting
governments. As long as these obligations are
compatible with the minimal standard of
justice, they are legitimate even if they have
arisen without state consent

 The main problem of legitimacy (legitimacy deficit) at

the international level is technocratic elite, lacking in
democratic accountability to individuals and nonstate
groups, is playing an increasingly powerful role in a
system of regional and global governance. The more
efficient remedy for this problem, he argues, is
protecting basic human rights and improving
democratic accountability.

THREE ISSUES NEEDED TO BE ADDRESSED

CONCERNING GLOBAL LEGITIMACY

1. What are global governance institutions and in

what ways can and should they be thought of as
taking over roles from states or their governments?
2. What is the legitimacy problem that such
governance institutions face? Is the main problem
that they enjoy authority which needs justification,
or that they are perceived as potentially exercising
unjustified coercion?

3. How can they solve this problem of

legitimacy and what are legitimacy
criteria that apply to them? How, if at
all, do these criteria differ from those
that apply at the level of nation states?

LEGITIMATION THEORY
Criteria: legality, normative justifiability, and
consent
Legality, level 1: it is acquired and exercised
according to established rules (conventional/
constitutional-legal)

Legality
Constitutional revisions, adaptation of laws
Membership in international organizations with
binding force (WTO, UN Human Rights
conventions); active participation in the
(re)formulation of international rules and
norms

Normative justifiability:
Performance, level 2a: The rules are
justifiable according to socially accepted beliefs
about the proper ends and standards of
government, particularly the pursuit of the
common interest, and
Authority, level 2b: the rightful source of
authority

Performance
(Level 2a)
Emphasis on social justice, harmony, and
common interest; avoidance of manifest forms
of exclusive privilege (corruption)
(Selective) involvement in the global economy;
advocacy of balanced, harmonious
international development

Authority
(Level 2b)
Principle of popular sovereignty qualified by
political ideology, scientific doctrine, religion,
tradition, Natural laws, etc.
International cooperation combined with
maintenance of national sovereignty; efforts to
improve the international response to specific
political ideologies

Consent, level 3:
Positions of authority are confirmed by
expressed consent or affirmation of
appropriate subordinates (electoral
mode/mass mobilization mode), even if this is
voluntary only to a limited degree

Consent
(Level 3)
Mobilization of domestic consent (ideological
mobilization of the masses; consultative, participatory
mechanisms; elections; etc.); prevention of active
dissent
Mobilization of external recognition by the international
community, alliance partners, neighbouring states in
the region; rejection of international criticism