Is There a Distinctively Associative Account of Political Obligation?

Horton, John; Windeknecht, Ryan Gabriel

doi:10.1111/1467-9248.12129

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Although the actual consent theory became almost universally rejected (with some notable and partial exceptions like Beran 1987;Gilbert 2006;Simmons 1993), most contemporary accounts of PO still rely on some version of these background assumptions or at least subscribe to most of them. In other words, fair play theories (Dagger 1997;Rawls 1964), associative accounts (Dworkin 1986;Hardimon 1994;Horton 2006Horton , 2007Horton and Windeknecht 2015), natural duty theories (Rawls 1971;Wellmann 2005) etc. still largely follow the logic of the paradigmatic account of PO.…”

Section: The Received Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Realist Membership Account of Political Obligation

Szűcs

2023

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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The paper offers a realist account of political obligation. More precisely, it offers an account that belongs to the Williamsian liberal strain of contemporary realist theory (as opposed to a Geussian radical realist strain) and draws on and expands some ideas familiar from Bernard Williams’s oeuvre (thick/thin ethical concepts, political realism/moralism, a minimal normative threshold for distinctively political rule). Accordingly, the paper will claim that the fact of membership in a polity provides people with sufficient reason for complying with those political authority claims whose source is that particular polity. The paper will explain that membership in a polity is constituted not by communitarian identification (Horton), nationhood (Tamir), joined commitment/plural subjectivity (Gilbert), but by the fact that people are stably exposed to political authority claims associated with a particular polity which they find making sense as passing the minimal normative threshold for a distinctively political form of rule (as opposed to the rule of terror or sheer coercion). This political-ethical phenomenon is widely known as political obligation but the paper will argue that the label is in fact a misnomer because it does not refer to a generic obligation. The implications of this account are manifold but two seem especially important: first, the notion of political obligation makes sense even beyond the realm of moralist political theory and, second, realist political theory should pay more attention to the problem of compliance than it used to do.

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Section: The Received Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Realist Membership Account of Political Obligation

Szűcs

2023

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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“…This picture directs our gaze not toward a foundational identity of the governed, constituted and characterized independently of the contingent political relations in which they find themselves, but toward their identity in political relations: membership, or lack thereof, in a political community. This picture stresses the ontological significance of identity: the existence of political relationships of a certain kind constitutes a reason for treating a regime as legitimate (Gilbert 2006;Renzo 2012;Horton and Windeknecht 2015).…”

Section: Three Picturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Legitimacy as an Existential Predicament

Fossen

2021

Political Theory

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This essay contributes to developing a new approach to political legitimacy by asking what is involved in judging the legitimacy of a regime from a practical point of view. It is focused on one aspect of this question: the role of identity in such judgment. I examine three ways of understanding the significance of identity for political legitimacy: the foundational, associative, and agonistic picture. Neither view, I claim, persuasively captures the dilemmas of judgment in the face of disagreement and uncertainty about who “I” am and who “we” are. I then propose a composite, pragmatic picture. This view casts the question of political legitimacy as an existential predicament: it is fundamentally a question about who you are—both as a person and as a member of collectives. The pragmatic picture integrates rational, prudential, and ethical qualities of good judgment that were heretofore associated with mutually exclusive ways of theorizing legitimacy. It also implies that the question of legitimacy cannot be resolved philosophically.

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“…Horton's argument, unlike Dworkin's, does not compromise the associative assumptions because, as Horton emphatically stresses, the community's being valuable from the universal point of view is only a necessary condition of membership counting as a reason, but not a sufficient one. “[I]t is not the moral conditions that a polity should meet […] that give rise to political obligations,” Horton argues, “rather, it is being a member of a particular polity” (Horton and Windeknecht, forthcoming). The two‐tier structure of his argument allows Horton to appeal to universal moral principles by way of accounting for the obligation‐generating character of relationships without thereby compromising the idea that it is the fact of relationship that is a basic reason for action.…”

Section: The Associative Argument and Its Criticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See also Horton and Windeknecht, forthcoming; Dworkin , 199; Tamir , 96–8. For critique, Wellman , 194–200 and , 221–2; Jeske , 38.…”

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confidence: 99%

Communal Ties and Political Obligations

Mokrosińska

2013

Ratio Juris

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The associative argument for political obligation has taken an important place in the debate on political obligation. Proponents of this view argue that an obligation to obey the government arises out of ties of affiliation among individuals who share the same citizenship. According to them, relationships between compatriots constitute basic reasons for action in the same way in which relationships between family members or friends do. As critics point out, this account of the normative force of relationships has counterintuitive implications: if relationships between people sharing the same citizenship make up basic reasons for action, then relationships between people sharing other attributes, for example, relationships between racists or sexists form basic reasons for action too. In this essay, I pursue a modified version of the associative approach that is not vulnerable to this objection.* I would like to thank Govert den Hartogh for many discussions on the topic; Janos Kis for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper; an anonymous reviewer for helpful suggestions. bs_bs_banner

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Is There a Distinctively Associative Account of Political Obligation?

Cited by 10 publications

References 32 publications

A Realist Membership Account of Political Obligation

A Realist Membership Account of Political Obligation

Political Legitimacy as an Existential Predicament

Communal Ties and Political Obligations

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