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POLITICAL OBLIGATIONS IN A SEA OF TYRANNY AND CRUSHING POVERTY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2014

Aaron Maltais
Aaron Maltais*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, SwedenAaron.Maltais@statsvet.uu.se
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Abstract

Christopher Wellman is the strongest proponent of the natural-duty theory of political obligations and argues that his version of the theory can satisfy the key requirement of “particularity”; namely, justifying to members of a state the system of political obligations they share in. Critics argue that natural-duty theories like Wellman's actually require well-ordered states and/or their members to dedicate resources to providing the goods associated with political order to needy outsiders. The implication is that natural-duty approaches weaken the particularity requirement and cannot justify to citizens the systems of political obligation they share in. I argue that the critics’ diagnosis of natural-duty approaches is correct, whereas the proposed implication is false. I maintain that 1) only natural-duty approaches can justify political obligations, and that 2) weakening the particularity requirement contributes to the theory's ability to justify a range-limited system of political obligations among compatriots.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 2014 , pp. 186 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Helpful comments on an earlier draft were provided by Sofia Näsström, Marcus Agnafors, Eva Erman, Jörgen Hermansson, Ed Page, Chris Armstrong, Magnus Reitberger, Jouni Reinikainen, Jörgen Ödalen, Jonas Hultin Rosenberg, and from workshop participants in Uppsala and Växjö.

References

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37 Note that the natural-duty approach is not bound to the existing state system as the only institutional means to securing political order.

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55 Id. at 811.

56 Wellman, Political, supra note 2, at 106.

57 See Thomas M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (1998), at 189–247; Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (1991), at 10–20, 41–52.

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