The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

Michael Huemer

Language: English

Pages: 365

ISBN: 1137281650

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The state is often ascribed a special sort of authority, one that obliges citizens to obey its commands and entitles the state to enforce those commands through threats of violence. This book argues that this notion is a moral illusion: no one has ever possessed that sort of authority.

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Lexington Books. Cashman, Greg, and Leonard C. Robinson. 2007. An Introduction to the Causes of War: Patterns of Interstate Conflict from World War I to Iraq. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. CBS News. 2011. ‘WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning Faces 22 New Charges’, CBS News, 2 March, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/02/national/main20038464.shtml. Accessed March 10, 2011. Center for Responsive Politics. 2011. Reelection Rates over the Years, www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php?cycle=2006.

on its outcomes. This is a tenuous argument – why should we assume that any procedure, however good, confers a content-independent, exclusive entitlement for the state to coerce people to comply with the decisions produced by that procedure? Nevertheless, let us examine this line of thought more closely. 4.2.2 Deliberative democracy as fantasy If there is one thing that stands out when one reads philosophical descriptions of deliberative democracy, it is how far these descriptions fall from

bound by things other than the results of public deliberation. For instance, some believe in natural law, many believe in divinely mandated moral requirements, some believe themselves bound by a constitution that was established long ago, and so on. According to Cohen’s second condition, Deliberation is reasoned in that the parties to it are required to state their reasons for advancing proposals [ ... ] They give reasons with the expectation that those reasons (and not, for example, their

‘consequentialist arguments for authority’, I mean arguments that ascribe moral weight to the goodness or badness of an action’s consequences and that appeal directly to that factor in attempting to derive political obligation and legitimacy.1 I focus in this section on arguments for political obligation. These arguments proceed in two stages. First, one argues that there are great values that are secured by government and that could not be secured without government. Second, one argues that

well-developed and compelling body of theory, comprising economics and game theory, that works out the consequences of the assumption of rational egoism. Those familiar with the theory can generally agree upon a large range of predictions, regardless of their initial moral, religious, or political leanings.16 This is important, again, for making progress in social theory. The simpler a theory’s assumptions are, and the more straightforward its predictions, the less room there is for human bias

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