Political Obligation and Political Recognition

Abstract

The problem of political obligation may roughly be characterized as the philosophical challenge of establishing that there is a general obligation to obey the law as such. In this paper, I defend the recognitional account of political obligation, which consists of the following three claims: (i) citizens of a liberal polity have obligations to recognize one another as free and equal moral members of their own political community and communicate this recognition; (ii) under certain conditions, having respect for the law of one’s own state is a crucially important way of affording and communicating such recognition, and so we are obliged as citizens to have such respect under those conditions; and (iii) being obligated to have respect for the law entails having a general obligation to obey it. Taken jointly, these claims show how the following three concepts—political recognition, respect for law, and political obligation—are united in a normative nexus that yields a demanding but deeply attractive interpersonal ideal for political life. I then characterize some forms of “meta-skepticism” about political obligation that question the concept’s importance for political philosophy. I conclude by arguing that one virtue of the recognitional account is that it justifies a philosophical interest in political obligation even if these meta-skeptical views are true.