Principal arguments in favour of political obligation

Introduction

The question asks for the principal arguments in favour of a moral duty to obey the state. They are drawn from several traditions, and each answers a different version of the question: why should I obey?

Meaning of political obligation

Political obligation is the duty of a person to accept and obey the commands of the authority under which they live, and it is the subject of Unit V alongside the idea of political community. The word goes back to a Latin root for what binds a person to perform what is required. IGNOU separates three senses of it: in ethics, a duty a person accepts through rational understanding; in jurisprudence, the regulation of social life by law; and in politics, the bond to live under some authority and obey it. The theory of political obligation asks why people obey the state as an authority and in what circumstances they should disobey it.

It is tied to legitimacy. Holders of power want their subjects to believe in the rightness of their rule; once power is accepted as legitimate, people obey freely and force need not be constantly on display. Some people comply only because breaking the rules would be punished, but a system is more stable to the degree that people obey because they accept the established order as legitimate, and in practice every system rests on a mix of consent and coercion.

IGNOU gives political obligation three features. It includes resistance: people are to be critical of the way authority is used and to resist invasions of their liberties, though protest must be related to social well-being and should not cause the total breakdown of the state. It is bound up with legitimacy and effectiveness, the belief that existing institutions are the most appropriate ones and the measure of how well the system performs. And it asks every conscientious person to take an interest in public affairs and policy, with honesty and public spirit on both sides.

Citizenship adds that obligations run among citizens and not only to the state: besides the legal obligations states impose, there is a moral obligation to take part in and contribute to the shared life of the community, and in a democracy disputes are to be settled by negotiation and discussion and not by force.

Grounds of political obligation

Each theory of political obligation names a different sanction behind the duty to obey. The main answers to "why obey the state?" are these.

1. Consent and social contract. Obligation rests on the will of the people. Hobbes and Locke argued that people in a state of nature made a contract by which political authority came into being on their consent, and Rousseau gave the idea a philosophical form by placing obligation in the general will, the law of the general good that a member of civil society is bound to obey. For Locke the aim and justification of government is to protect life, liberty and property, and people can form governments and also dissolve them. The theory makes legitimate authority rest on the consent of the governed and gives a right to resist a government that breaks the contract, which has helped to protect liberties and check arbitrary rulers. Its weakness is that a contract made in an imagined state of nature is a fiction that does not bind the present generation in law, and people can claim to withdraw consent whenever they object, so a theory of obligation turns into a theory of rebellion.
2. Divine right. One of the oldest answers: the ruler's authority comes directly from God, so subjects are bound by religion to obey and may not rebel even against a wicked king. It was widely held in the Middle Ages; Grotius, Hobbes and Locke rejected its metaphysical basis for consent, and secularism and then democracy took away its appeal.
3. Idealist theory. The source of obligation is human rationality: the state is a self-sufficing community, identical with society, so there is no opposition between individual and state, and a person develops best by obeying it. Plato and Aristotle treated the state and its members as an organic whole, Hegel identified the individual's liberty with complete obedience to the state, and Green linked political obligation with moral obligation, so that only actions serving a moral end should be made obligatory. Critics call it too abstract and note its reluctance to admit a right of resistance: Green and Bosanquet allowed it only in exceptional cases and vaguely, and Treitschke went as far as asking people to worship the state.
4. Prescriptive or traditional theory. Authority is legitimate when long custom sanctions it, and people obey because obedience has become a settled convention; the state is a delicate structure built over time that balances conflicting interests, so the duty is to obey while working only for gradual, peaceful change. Hegel held that morality takes concrete form in the customs and institutions of the state, so the present order is owed obedience; Burke placed obligation in respect for tradition, supporting the American colonists who claimed the traditional rights of Englishmen but opposing the French Revolution for its abstract rights of man; Oakeshott treats politics as a skill learnt by practice. Conservatives likewise read liberty as doing one's duty within an organic society and see authority as arising naturally within it. The objection is that people also do away with traditions that have lost their use, and that the theory would oblige people to accept long-established unjust laws such as racial discrimination.
5. Marxian theory. There is no obligation to the bourgeois state before the revolution, total obligation to the new state of the proletariat after it, and finally, as the state withers away in a classless and stateless society, political obligation is converted into social obligation. Critics say it rests on expediency, since what is urged against the bourgeois state is forbidden against the new one, and that it ignores the individual's own judgement in deciding whether to obey.
6. Legitimacy and democracy. In a democracy, participation by citizens adds legitimacy to government policies and allows accountability; voting once in five years is not enough, and a government without participation loses legitimacy and has to rely on force. Rousseau argued that people more readily accept a law they helped to make.

Order and legitimacy. Beyond these, a further argument comes from the necessity of order: a political system in which people observe rules voluntarily because they accept their legitimacy is more stable than one kept in place by force, and so everyone gains from a general duty to comply. The state also does what individuals cannot, such as settle collective choices on resources and protect rights, which in NCERT's account rights call on it to do.

Political obligation and democratic governance

Democratic governance is the strongest setting for political obligation, because the usual objections to obedience (that the ruler commands without the subject's say) lose force when citizens take part in making the rules. (1) Consent and legitimacy. Democracy means rule by the people; it has a general advantage over other forms, since it compels decision-makers to heed the interests, opinions and rights of most people, brings in varied views and helps build the character of citizens. Participation adds legitimacy to government policies, and a government that loses it needs force to rule. Rousseau's remark that people are more willing to accept a law they helped make links participation and obedience. (2) Reciprocal obligations. Citizens have duties along with rights, and each person's rights call for respecting those of others; Dahl asks citizens to respect their own and others' rights and obligations. Rights likewise oblige the state to act in certain ways and to refrain from others. (3) Active citizenship. The obligation is more than voting every few years; the unit stresses participation between elections and that an active citizen helps shape the system's structures and rules. (4) Limits and dissent. In a democracy the judiciary can protect individuals whose rights are violated, and dissent is channelled through negotiation and discussion in place of force. (5) Danger signs. The minimalist, purely procedural view can lead to concealed authoritarianism where leaders use elections and ignore constitutional limits; passive citizenship can allow a state to ignore interests or manipulate. Excess demands may erode authority, so a balance between government authority and limits on it is needed.

Conclusion

The principal arguments for political obligation are consent, the idealist appeal to reason, respect for tradition and the need for order and legitimacy, with participation giving them added force in a democracy; divine right, once dominant, has lost its appeal. Each has difficulties, and IGNOU treats resistance to the abuse of authority as part of the idea itself, so the duty is best read as conditional.