The Deep Problem with Voluntaristic Theories of Political Obligation
Mikhail Valdman
Voluntaristic theories of political obligation claim that a citizen’s moral obligation to obey his state’s laws is grounded in his voluntary undertakings or agreements. Two of this view’s more popular varieties are consent theories and reciprocation theories, the former grounding a citizen’s political obligation in a promise (either tacit or explicit) and the latter grounding it in the acceptance or the receipt of the benefits of social cooperation.
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A common objection to these theories is that they cannot justify political obligation because the actual relationship between citizens and their state is insufficiently voluntary.
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Criticizing consent theories, for instance, A. John Simmons writes:
For many citizens there are few acceptable options to remaining in their states and obeying (most) law, and for most persons active resistance to the state is in effect impossible. And for none of us is there any option to living in some state or other, all of which make (at least) the same core demands on us. These facts raise serious doubts about the voluntariness of any widely performed acts that might be alleged to be binding acts of political consent. And in the absence of an adequate level of voluntariness, such acts simply cannot be counted as grounding moral duties to obey the law.
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A similar problem seems to afflict reciprocation theories. Here again is Simmons:
…persons in real political societies seldom freely accept the benefits their societies provide (having no reasonable choice in the matter). Typical
1 For a defense of reciprocation theories, see Hart, H.L.A. (1955), “Are There any Natural Rights?”,
Philosophical Review, 64: 175-191; Rawls, J. (1964), “Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play”, in Law and Philosophy , S. Hook (ed.), (New York: New York University Press). For a more recent defense, see
Klosko, G. (2005), Political Obligations , Oxford University Press. Recent defenses of consent theories can be found in Beran, H. (1987) The Consent Theory of Political Obligation , London: Croom Helm;
Steinberger, P. (2004), The Idea of the State , Cambridge University Press, 218.
2 This criticism can be found in many places, including Simmons, A. J. (1979), Moral Principles and
Political Obligations , Princeton University Press; Horton, J. (1992), Political Obligation, London:
MacMillan, 33-36; Klosko, G. (2005), Political Obligations , 123-9.
3 Simmons, A. J., Wellman, C. H. (2005), Is There a Duty to Obey the Law?
(Cambridge University Press),
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citizens can thus not reasonably be thought to be treating others unfairly if they decline to reciprocate.
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Surely Simmons is right that, for many citizens of modern states, many of the benefits they receive from living in their state cannot be described as freely accepted and any promise they might make to obey their state’s laws would likely not be wholly voluntary.
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Simmons’s arguments suggest, however, that if citizens had acceptable options to remaining in their states or if they had a reasonable choice in their receipt of social benefits, then voluntaristic theories of political obligation would be on firmer ground. I will argue that this is not so – that voluntaristic theories would have trouble explaining why a citizen would be obligated to obey his state’s laws even if his relationship with his state were unquestionably voluntary. I will argue that such theories fail at a deeper level than many recognize, making them unsuitable for justifying political obligation, or at least far less suitable than is commonly believed.
Why should we care if voluntaristic theories fail a deeper level than many recognize? If Simmons’s arguments expose their flaws, why care if their flaws run deeper still? In part we should care because Simmons’s arguments rest on contingencies.
That states tend to spread their benefits far and wide (thus making these benefits hard to avoid) and that, for many, emigrating would be difficult and costly, for instance, do not seem to be inevitable features of political life. At least in principle, technological advancements could allow states to target their benefits in ways that circumvent the worry that these benefits are seldom freely accepted, and various compensation schemes could be devised to make emigration less difficult and costly. Indeed, one might take
Simmons’s arguments to be directed not at voluntaristic theories but at modern states,
4 Ibid. 120.
5 Though see Beran, H. (1987) for an interesting rebuttal.
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criticizing these states for not working to improve the voluntariness of their relationship with their citizens. Such efforts, however, no matter how successful, would not justify political obligation as this idea is commonly understood. Let us examine why.
To begin, it is important to understand what being politically obligated involves.
While there is no canonical account, most would agree that a political obligation is a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law not because of its content but because it was issued by the legitimate political authority. As Leslie Green puts it, “political obligation is the doctrine that everyone has a moral reason to obey all of the laws of his or her own state and that this reason binds independently of the content of the law”.
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A political obligation, then, is a largely content-neutral obligation to obey the laws of one’s state – one that depends not on the law’s content but on its provenance . I describe this obligation as being largely content-neutral because there is some dispute over whether it covers immoral laws.
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We can set this worry aside, however, because voluntary acts, whether they involve consent or the acceptance of benefits, could not ground political obligation even if the laws at issue were not immoral. Or so I will argue.
To see the problem with grounding political obligation in voluntary acts, consider two scenarios, the first involving the acceptance of benefits and the second involving promising, where there is reason to doubt the obligation-generating power of the act in question. I will refer to these scenarios as the striped sock cases .
Scenario 1 (The Crossroads case) : Fred is a regular at Crossroads coffee shop.
Crossroads is like most coffee shops except that it has the unusual policy that its customers must wear a particular kind of sock while on its premises – a sock with a colored stripe just below its top band. Suppose that this policy, which is well advertised,
6 Green, L. (1988), The Authority of the State, Oxford University Press, 309. See also Klosko, G. (2005),
15. Note that nothing in this essay turns on whether being politically obligated is a matter of having moral reasons to obey the law or being morally obligated to do so.
7 See, for instance, Klosko, G. (2005), p. 11.
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reflects its owner’s odd aesthetic sensibilities and serves no other purpose. And suppose that this stripe is not actually visible (unless one wears shorts or hikes up one’s pants).
Finally, suppose that Crossroads is one of several coffee shops in Fred’s area and that he prefers it to the others for the quality of its coffee and for its reliable internet service.
Scenario 2 (The house-sitting case) : Joe offers Fred the use of his house while he will be away on vacation, provided that Fred agrees to abide by Joe’s house rules (which are posted on Joe’s refrigerator). Fred, who feels no pressure to accept Joe’s offer, agrees.
Later that day, Fred arrives at Joe’s house and discovers that among Joe’s many sensible rules is a rule that all guests must wear striped socks while sitting on the living room sofa.
Suppose that this rule is just as arbitrary as Crossroads’ striped sock rule and exists only because of Joe’s odd aesthetic sensibilities.
In the Crossroads case, having received the benefits of good coffee and internet access, and being aware of the striped sock rule, would Fred be morally obligated to obey it? Would it be wrong for him to receive these benefits while wearing an “unauthorized” pair of socks? In the house-sitting case, having just learned of the striped sock rule, and being alone in Joe’s house, would Fred act wrongly by sitting on Joe’s sofa in non-striped socks? My view is that in neither case would Fred act wrongly by disobeying the striped sock rule; while such disobedience may be discourteous, it does not appear (to me) to be even prima facie wrongful.
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This is so despite the fact that Fred’s receipt of Crossroads’ benefits and his promise to Joe were unquestionably voluntary. Indeed, in the Crossroads case, none of the reasons Simmons offers for why the relationship between citizens and their state lacks voluntariness applies, for Fred has the option of leaving Crossroads, he could patronize a different coffee shop that would not make the same demands on him, and he has a reasonable choice as to whether he receives the benefits that Crossroads provides. And in the house-sitting case, Fred has the acceptable option of refusing Joe’s offer. Nevertheless, I maintain that Fred’s refusal to obey the striped sock rule would not
8 I can concede that Fred’s disobedience would be discourteous since those who defend political obligation believe that disobeying the law (when one is obligated to obey it) is not merely a matter of discourtesy.
Note, however, that Fred’s disobedience may not be discourteous. Indeed, I suspect that if there is any discourtesy here, it lies in Joe’s and Crossroads’ arbitrary demands and not in Fred’s refusal to obey them.
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warrant a charge of wrongful conduct. If so, then accepting benefits or making promises, even when voluntary, may not morally bind. And this, I will argue, undermines the case for grounding political obligation in voluntary acts.
Some might not share these intuitions, perhaps because of a misreading of the cases. To avoid this, note that the striped sock cases are meant to be interpreted such that the policy in question lacks any compelling rationale and disobedience has no negative effect on anyone’s welfare (indeed, disobedience is largely undetectable ). Of course, some might remain unconvinced, insisting that their opposing judgment is based squarely on the fact that Fred freely promised to obey the rules or that he freely accepted
Crossroads’ benefits. For our purposes, it is not vital to settle this dispute, for, as I’ll show, Fred’s having some obligation to obey the striped sock rules need not undermine my thesis; one need not share my intuitions in the striped sock cases to see the deep problem with grounding political obligation in promises or in reciprocity. This dispute over the striped sock cases, however, compels me to argue in stages. Thus, in the next section, I will assume that the reader shares my intuition in the striped sock cases and I will show how this undermines the case for grounding political obligation in voluntary acts. And then I will argue that even those who do not share these intuitions should accept my view.
If Fred is not morally obligated to obey the striped sock rules
If Fred is not morally obligated to obey the striped sock rule despite his voluntary promise or receipt of benefits, what best explain why? Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that there is no relationship between an act’s voluntariness and its obligationgenerating power – that making promises or receiving benefits, even when voluntary, has
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no bearing on one’s obligations. This view, however, seems deeply implausible, and it cannot be inferred solely from the cases under consideration. Perhaps a more plausible explanation lies in the idea that voluntary acts like promising can create moral obligations only when the obligation in question is reasonable , which is not so in the striped sock cases. But this view is not plausible either. After all, if Fred had specifically promised
Joe that he would wear only striped socks while sitting on his sofa, then it seems that
Fred would be obligated to do so, irrespective of this rule’s reasonableness. But if the unreasonableness of the colored-sock rule does not explain why Fred isn’t obligated to obey it, then what does? I propose that the explanation lies in Fred’s promise’s lack of specificity – in its open-endedness ; the striped sock cases reveal that voluntary acts may be unable to create content-neutral obligations, or obligations to obey any law or policy whatsoever regardless of its content. On this view, Fred would be obligated to obey Joe’s striped sock rule had he specifically promised to do so, but not if he made the rather open-ended promise to obey any and all of Joe’s house rules, whatever they happen to be.
As further evidence that voluntary acts may be unable to create content-neutral obligations, consider standard worries regarding the morality of consensual slavery.
Some believe that one cannot justifiably sell oneself into slavery – that a promise to cede all of one’s decision-making authority to another would not be morally binding.
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Not everyone accepts this view, of course, but most would agree that there is at least something morally troubling about such contracts. Consider, however, the morality of partial consensual slavery or the morality of ceding one’s decision-making authority in narrowly defined contexts . Suppose that Bill is greatly impressed by Steve’s bowling
9 John Locke defends this view in his Two Treatises of Government , II, 4, 24. John Stuart Mill defends it in his On Liberty (1980), Clarendon Press, 148-158.
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skills, so he promises to obey Steve in all bowling-related matters. Here Bill puts himself at another’s disposal – he cedes to another his decision-making authority – but only in a narrowly defined context. He does not promise to do whatever he is told, but he promises to abide by all context-appropriate decisions. Unlike largely open-ended promises, such constrained promises seem neither morally inappropriate nor non-binding. This suggests that an important part of what makes consensual slavery morally disturbing is its openendedness – that the promise to obey is too unconstrained. This result, in conjunction with earlier arguments, gives us reason to believe that voluntary acts – even promises – cannot create content-neutral obligations. And since a political obligation is (largely) content-neutral, there is reason to believe that promising to obey the law or accepting society’s benefits, even when voluntary, would not obligate one to obey the law (even if the laws in question are not immoral).
Of course, even if Fred is not obligated to obey the striped socks rule and even if there is something troubling about voluntary slavery, we need not conclude that voluntary acts cannot create content-neutral obligations. Instead, we might revive the aforementioned reasonableness constraint but apply it only to content-neutral obligations.
On this proposal, voluntary acts would be able to create unreasonable specific obligations but not unreasonable content-neutral obligations; had Fred specifically promised to obey
Joe’s unreasonable striped socks rule, then he would be obligated to do so, but his promise to obey Joe’s house rules was too open-ended to commit him to obeying a rule that lacks a compelling rationale. This view seems promising, for it seems plausible that, by virtue of his promise, Fred would be obligated to obey Joe’s reasonable house rules
(say, a rule demanding that the security system be activated at night) but not the
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unreasonable ones. For those who share my intuitions in the striped sock cases but do not wish to rule out grounding largely open-ended commitments in voluntary acts, this may be the best option.
For our purposes, however, we need not determine whether we should incorporate a reasonableness constraint into our explanation for why Fred is not obligated to obey the striped sock rule. This is because doing so would not significantly improve the prospects for grounding political obligation in voluntary acts. After all, if with this constraint, a political obligation grounded in voluntary acts would not be an obligation to do whatever the political authority commands but an obligation to obey only reasonable commands; being obligated to obey a law would depend as much on its content as it would on its provenance . Such a view, then, cannot deliver the standard conception of political obligation. It cannot justify an open-ended commitment to do whatever the political authority commands (so long as what is commanded is not immoral).
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And so, if Fred is not obligated to obey the striped sock rules, we have reason to believe that neither accepting benefits nor promise-making, even when voluntary, can ground political obligation as this idea is commonly understood. For if Fred’s promise to obey Joe’s house rules or his acceptance of Crossroads’ benefits does not obligate him to obey the striped sock rule, this must be due either to his commitment’s open-endedness or to a combination of its open-endedness and the rule’s unreasonableness. If the former is correct, then voluntary acts cannot create open-ended commitments, thus precluding the possibility of grounding political obligation in such acts. If the latter is correct, then a political obligation grounded in voluntary acts would be at least somewhat content-
10 One might object that it has been shown only that a political obligation grounded in voluntary acts would be less content-neutral than is typically believed. I address this in the conclusion.
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sensitive – whether one had an obligation to obey any particular law would depend on its reasonableness and not just on its provenance.
If Fred is morally obligated to obey the striped sock rules
Now suppose that Fred is morally obligated to obey the striped sock rule either because of his promise or his receipt of benefits. If so, then there would be reason to believe that voluntaristic theories can justify the acquisition of content-neutral obligations, even unreasonable ones. And this, then, would suggest that the main obstacle to grounding political obligation in promises or in reciprocity lies in the kinds of objections that Simmons and others raise regarding their voluntariness, and not in a general worry about the power of such acts to morally bind. But notice that even if Fred is obligated to obey the striped sock rule, it is possible that his commitment’s open-endedness or this rule’s unreasonableness (or both) diminish his obligation’s strength . And this may be all we need to show that voluntaristic theories cannot justify political obligation.
Assume, then, that Fred is obligated to obey the striped sock rule, and consider his obligation’s strength. In the house-sitting case, under what circumstances could Fred justifiably disobey this rule? Naturally, such disobedience would be justified in an emergency situation, especially if lives were at stake. But set emergencies aside, and suppose instead that, for Fred, complying with the striped-sock rule would simply be inconvenient or burdensome . Suppose that Fred arrives at Joe’s house without the appropriate socks (not yet being aware of the striped sock rule), and that obtaining them would require a two hour drive, or that, because of poor circulation, Fred prefers to wear wool socks, but that these are not available in the appropriate design. Under the circumstances, alone in Joe’s house, would Fred act wrongly by sitting on the sofa in an
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unauthorized pair of socks (assuming that there are no other comfortable places to sit)?
Here it seems that Fred would not act wrongly by violating the striped sock rule. In an informal survey of colleagues and students this intuition was fairly widespread. Indeed, among those who thought that Fred was obligated to obey the striped sock rule, most were drawn to the view that this obligation would not be especially strong, and that it could be outweighed by considerations of convenience alone.
Now compare the house-sitting case with a case in which Fred specifically promises Joe that he will wear only striped socks while sitting on Joe’s sofa (call this the specific promise case ). In this case, it seems that inconvenience alone would not free
Fred from his obligation. In this case it seems wrong for Fred to sit on Joe’s sofa in an unauthorized pair of socks, whether or not this would result in him having cold feet or whether obtaining the right socks would require a long drive.
11 In an informal survey of colleagues and students this intuition was also quite strong. Among those who thought that Fred was obligated to obey Joe’s striped-sock rule, most agreed that, all else being equal, Fred’s obligation to obey the striped sock rule is much stronger when he specifically promised to do so than when he made the open-ended promise to obey Joe’s rules, whatever they happen to be.
What best explains why Fred’s obligation to obey the striped sock rule is stronger in the specific-promise case than in the house-sitting case? Clearly, we cannot explain this merely by noting that the rule in question is unreasonable, since both cases feature
11 One might argue that a key difference between the specific promise case and the house-sitting case is that only in the former does Fred arrive at Joe’s house knowing about the striped sock rule. But imagine that, in the specific promise case, a demon makes Fred forget that he ever promised to obey this rule. In this case,
Fred arrives at Joe’s house unaware of the striped sock rule. Still, it seems that the mere inconvenience of obeying the striped sock rule would not free Fred from his obligation. Of course, in this case, it may not be reasonable to blame Fred for disobeying the rule. But blame is not at issue here.
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the same rule. Instead, the key difference seems to be that in one case Fred had specifically promised to wear striped socks whereas in the other case his promise was open-ended. Indeed, as in the previous section, we must choose between two proposals: that Fred’s obligation’s strength in the house-sitting case is diminished (1) by virtue of his promise’s open-endedness alone or (2) by virtue of his promise’s open-endedness in combination with the striped sock rule’s unreasonableness.
There are different ways to interpret (1) and (2), but, as before, we need not delve into such matters, for neither view can justify political obligation as this idea is commonly understood. While both (1) and (2) would permit some sort of political obligation to be grounded in voluntary acts, (1) would undermine this obligation’s strength while (2) would undermine the extent of its content-neutrality. On (1), a political obligation would not be nearly as strong as a content-specific obligation (all else being equal); one’s obligation to obey any law would be considerably weaker than if one had specifically promised to obey it. And while most theorists believe that a political obligation should be understood as being prima facie , the standard view, I take it, is that if we have such an obligation, it is no weaker (or at least not substantially weaker) than one’s prima facie content-specific obligations, all else being equal. Indeed, applying the lessons of the house-sitting case, we can note that on (1) one’s obligation to obey any particular law would be so weak that it could be overridden merely by considerations of convenience.
At first blush, (2) may seem more promising. After all, on (2), promising to obey the law would entail that one’s obligation to obey a particular reasonable law would be just as strong as if one had specifically promised to obey it. And specific promises, it
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seems, are quite strong. But on (2) the strength of an obligation to obey any particular law would hinge on its reasonableness and not merely on its provenance. And in cases of unreasonable laws, (2) would permit a political obligation to be overridden merely by considerations of convenience. And so while (2) may be more hospitable than (1) to those wishing to ground political obligation in voluntary acts, even (2) cannot deliver what defenders of political obligation seek: a content-neutral obligation to obey the law – one that applies because the law was issued by the legitimate authority – where this obligation is as strong as other similarly grounded obligations and cannot be overridden by considerations of convenience alone.
Conclusion
In all, then, the deep problem with voluntaristic theories of political obligation is not that a citizen’s relationship with his state is insufficiently voluntary. This relationship may well be such (for now), but there is reason to doubt that political obligation would be affected if matters were otherwise. This is because political obligation is content-neutral, and there is reason to believe that voluntary acts either cannot create such obligations, or that, if they can, they cannot do so in a way that vindicates standard views of what being politically obligated involves. As we have seen, there is a range of potential explanations for why Fred is not obligated (or is only weakly obligated) to obey the striped sock rules.
At one end is view that voluntary acts simply cannot create content-neutral obligations.
At the other end is the view that voluntary acts can create such obligations, even strong ones, provided that the specific act that one is thus obliged to perform is reasonable. No view in this range vindicates the standard conception of political obligation.
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Consider two objections. First, one might argue that I have shown only that a political obligation grounded in voluntary acts would be less content-neutral than is typically believed, and not that it wouldn’t
be content-neutral. After all, I have already acknowledged that a political obligation need not be entirely content-neutral to merit this label; I have noted, for instance, that we can refer to a political obligation as being
(largely) content-neutral even if there is no obligation to obey immoral laws. Perhaps one can make a similar claim about impossible laws – that there may be no obligation to do the impossible, but that this too would not rule out referring to political obligation as content-neutral. Building on these thoughts, one might argue that the proposed addition of a reasonableness constraint would also not require abandoning the content-neutral label. Adding this constraint, one might argue, would make political obligation less content-neutral than is commonly believed, but this, perhaps, is compatible with it being content-neutral enough to warrant this designation.
I offer three replies to this objection. First, recall that what has been proposed is a range of ways to deal with the striped sock cases. Some of these ways make use of a reasonableness constraint, but some do not. Recall, for instance, that what might best explain Fred’s not being obligated (or being only weakly obligated) to obey the striped sock rule is his commitment’s open-endedness alone. If correct, this view would plainly undermine any attempt to ground political obligation in voluntary acts. Second, note that even if a political obligation grounded in voluntary acts were merely less content-neutral than is commonly believed, this would still be an interesting result, especially if the reasonableness constraint is best interpreted as undermining not just entirely unreasonable laws but also insufficiently reasonable laws. Third, and most important, this
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objection overlooks a crucial difference between a reasonableness constraint and an immorality/impossibility constraint. If there is an immorality or an impossibility constraint on obligation, they (presumably) would apply across the board , to any obligation, regardless of its open-endedness or its ground. Such constraints, then, need not trouble the voluntarist, for they do not challenge his key assumption that, in principle, a promise to obey the law is no different with respect to its bindingness from ordinary content-specific promises. A reasonableness constraint, by contrast, would apply only to content-neutral obligations. Thus, unlike an impossibility/immorality constraint, a reasonableness constraint challenges voluntarism at its core, for it reveals that, even in principle, a promise to obey the law is fundamentally different with respect to its bindingness from the kinds of promises that clearly bind. And so, while a voluntarist may be able to accept my arguments without abandoning the content-neutral label for political obligation, he would then have to acknowledge a crucial difference between content-specific promises and a promise to obey the law.
Second, one might ask whether the objections I have raised to voluntaristic theories apply with equal force to any attempt to justify a content-neutral obligation to obey the law. After all, can any theory explain why someone would be obligated to obey unreasonable laws? Can any theory justify Fred’s having a (strong) obligation to wear striped socks while sitting on Joe’s sofa? If not, then it may not seem especially interesting to learn that making promises or receiving benefits, even when voluntary, cannot justify this either. Perhaps, then, this essay’s arguments would be best directed at political obligation itself, and not at just one of its possible grounds.
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I offer three replies to this objection as well. First, notice that it is not accurate to say that nothing can justify Fred’s having the obligation in question. Indeed, we have seen that if Fred had specifically promised Joe that he would obey the striped-sock rule, then Fred would be obligated to do so. This shows that one can become obligated to do unreasonable things. And since at least one way to become so obligated is to promise to do so, it is interesting and even surprising to learn that promising to obey the law may not obligate you to obey unreasonable laws (or any laws, for that matter). Second, notice that there are theories that are at least capable of justifying one’s having a strong open-ended obligation to obey the law, even if some of the laws are unreasonable. Consider, for instance, a rule-consequentialist approach. It does not seem far-fetched to think that, in the case of a minimally just state, more goodness would result from citizens following a rule instructing them to obey the law regardless of its content than a rule instructing them to obey the law only if it is reasonable. If so, then the standard conception of political obligation can be defended on rule-consequentialist grounds.
Third, and most important, let me acknowledge that my arguments, if sound, may well undermine more than just voluntarism about political obligation. What they may undermine, however, is not political obligation itself but a particular strategy for its justification – one that seeks to justify our having this obligation, or any content-neutral obligation, for that matter, by examining the criteria for the acquisition of contentspecific obligations. My arguments suggest that the standards by which we assess the strength of content-specific obligations do not apply (or do not apply entirely ) in the case of content-neutral obligations. We cannot, in short, assume that if X suffices for the acquisition of a content-specific obligation, then X also suffices for the acquisition of an
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equally strong content-neutral obligation, even if all else is equal. Not all theories of political obligation employ such a strategy. Natural duty theories, for instance, of which rule-consequentialism is but an instance, tend not to do so. Roughly, these theories try to show that a content-neutral obligation to obey the law can be derived from a more basic moral principle (e.g. maximize the good, promote justice) in conjunction with certain empirical facts about the importance of stable government.
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Voluntaristic theories, by contrast, get their plausibility from the widely shared view that content-specific promises, when voluntary, are (largely) morally binding. From this it is inferred that if citizens voluntarily promise to obey their state’s laws, then they would be obligated to do so, and that this obligation would be just as strong as their content-specific promise-based obligations, all else being equal. Of course, a key assumption here is that, with respect to its binding power, a promise’s open-endedness is itself of no consequence. This assumption, however, seems false. And that is voluntarism’s deep problem.
12 For an interesting discussion of natural duty theories, see Simmons, A. J., Wellman, C. H. (2005), Is
There a Duty to Obey the Law?
(Cambridge University Press), 122-4.
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