Citizens of a state obey its laws primarily because they fear punishment if they don't, and they value the social stability that law provides. Does this constitute political obligation as defined in political philosophy?
AYes, because any reason to obey the law counts as political obligation
BYes, because prudential reasons are the strongest basis for obligation
CNo, because political obligation is specifically a moral duty to obey, not a prudential calculation
DNo, because political obligation requires having expressly consented to the government
Political obligation is defined as the *moral* duty to obey the law simply because it is law — not a strategic calculation about self-interest or consequences. Fear of punishment and valuing social stability are prudential reasons to comply, not moral obligations. The distinction matters because a moral obligation would hold even when you could safely disobey undetected, whereas a purely prudential reason would not. Political philosophers want to know whether there is a specifically moral reason binding citizens to law, over and above what is strategically rational.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
Philosopher A argues: you benefit from roads, courts, and public safety maintained by your state, so you are obligated to pay taxes and obey the law. Philosopher B responds by analogy: your neighbor began mowing your lawn weekly without asking, and now demands payment. You never requested this service. What is Philosopher B's objection targeting?
AThe claim that roads and courts are actually beneficial to citizens
BWhether merely receiving unsolicited benefits, without requesting or accepting them, can generate moral obligation
CThe idea that taxation is a valid form of burden-sharing in a cooperative scheme
DWhether fair-play theory applies only to voluntary associations rather than states
This is Simmons's objection to fair-play theory. Hart and Rawls argued that accepting benefits from a cooperative scheme obligates you to bear your share of burdens. Simmons's lawn-mowing counterexample attacks the key premise: does passively receiving benefits — especially when you never requested them and cannot easily refuse them — really obligate you? If not, then citizens who simply exist within a state without actively welcoming its benefits may have no fair-play obligation. The objection targets the nature of 'acceptance,' not the fairness of burden-sharing.
Question 3 True / False
A state can be politically legitimate — its authority to make and enforce law can be justified — even if its citizens have no strong moral duty to obey every law it enacts.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
Legitimacy and obligation are related but distinct questions. Legitimacy asks: does the state have the right to rule? Obligation asks: do I have a moral duty to comply? A state might be a justified political institution while still enacting unjust or unwise laws that citizens have no moral duty to follow. The philosophical literature treats these as separate problems, and the distinction matters for debates about civil disobedience: one can acknowledge a state's legitimacy while still denying an obligation to obey a particular unjust law.
Question 4 True / False
Tacit consent theory succeeds in explaining political obligation for citizens who remain in their country, because residing in a territory constitutes meaningful consent to its government.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Tacit consent theory faces decisive objections: genuine consent requires knowing one is consenting, having a real alternative, and facing no prohibitive costs of exercising that alternative. For most people in most societies, emigration is prohibitively expensive financially, linguistically, and socially — or literally impossible. If remaining is not a genuine choice but a practical necessity, 'tacit consent' is not really consent. As critics note, the more theorists stretch the concept to cover all remaining residents, the less it resembles actual consent, which depends essentially on voluntariness.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why does natural duty theory have difficulty explaining why citizens owe special obligations to their own particular state rather than to any just state in the world?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Natural duty theory holds that all persons have a duty to support and comply with just institutions — a duty derived from the requirements of justice itself, not from consent or fair play. The problem is that this duty is universal: if you have a natural duty to support just institutions wherever they exist, why does your own state have stronger claim on your obedience than an equally just foreign state? The theory severs the connection between political obligation and your particular political community. It cannot explain the sense of special loyalty people feel toward their own government without adding further assumptions about membership, history, or identity — at which point it begins to resemble the associative theories it was meant to replace.
This 'particularity problem' is one of the central challenges in political obligation theory. Any satisfactory account must explain not just why you have some obligation to support justice, but why you have a *special* obligation to this state, its laws, and its citizens. Consent and fair play at least gesture toward a special relationship; natural duty's universality makes capturing that partiality difficult.