Pol Sci 303 class

1. Political AuthorityMarrie Angela D. Santiago x Jeffrey Angelo R. Gorith

2. Political Authority
• Authority
– power that people accept as right
• Power
– the ability to influence or control the behavior of
people
• Political
– Of, relating to, or dealing with the structure or
affairs of government, politics, or the state

3. Therefore…
• Political Authority
– Is the power of the government to enact laws and
control the behavior of the people

4. Political Authority
• How we govern ourselves today? Under what
arrangements do we live together in society?
– We are governed by the state that wields
unprecedented power to influence our lives
• Provides us with basic protection against attack on our
persons and possessions
• Regiment us in countless ways, laying down the terms
on which we may make our living, communicate, travel
to and fro, raise children, and so on
• Supply us with a huge range of benefits – health care,
education, roads, etc

5. Political Authority
• It would not be going too far to say that
today…
WE ARE CREATURES OF THE STATE.

6. Political Authority
• Human History
– Tribal societies – small scale
• Authority might rest in the hands of the village elders,
who would meet to settle any disputes that arose
among the members of the tribe, or interpret tribal law
– Larger scale
• Supreme authority rested in the hands of
kings/emperors

7. • Impact on people’s lives was limited
– They neither attempted to regulate them nor
provided most of the goods and services that
modern states provide
Political Authority

8. Political Authority
• Political authority was woven into
the social fabric in such a way that its
existence seemed relatively
uncontroversial.

9. Political Authority
• The only arguments that took place were
about
– Who in particular should wield it
– Whether it should be divided between different
bodies

10. Political Authority
• The problem of political authority
has preoccupied political
philosophers for the last 500 years.

11. Political Authority
• When we say the state exercises political
authority, what do we mean?
– Two sides
• People generally recognize it as authority
– Obey the law – they think that the body has the right to do so,
they have to comply
• People who refuse to obey
– But are compelled to do so because of threat of sanctions

12. Political Authority
• These two sides are complementary
– Those who do keep the law out of a sense of
obligation are encouraged to do so by knowing
that people who break it are likely to be punished
– So people who comply with authority voluntarily
know that they are protected from being taken
advantage of by less scrupulous persons

13. Political Authority
• Political authority then…
–Neither pure authority nor pure force,
but a blend of the two
• Combines authority proper with forced
compliance

14. Political Authority
• But the question remains…
Why do we need it?

15. Political Authority
Thomas Hobbes vs. Anarchists

16. Political Authority
• Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651)
– Political rule is one of the ferocious competitions for
the necessities of life
– Hobbes has experienced the absence of political
authority during English Civil wars – the picture he
painted of life in its absence was unremittingly bleak.
– Natural condition of mankind: without political rule,
leaving people in constant fear, and constantly
inclined, therefore, to strike at each others first

17. Political Authority
“In such condition, there is no place of Industry; because the
fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the
Earth; No navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be
imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of
moving, and removing such things as require much force; no
Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no
Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all,
continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the Life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

18. Political Authority
• Hobbes reaches pessimistic conclusion
– People are naturally selfish or greedy, and will
therefore try to grab as much for themselves as
they can when unrestrained by political authority.
But his real point is…
• Cooperation between people is impossible in the
absence of trust, and that trust will be lacking where
there is no superior power to enforce laws
• It is not safe to expect people to work together and do
their part in the absence of political authority

19. Political Authority
• Without political authority = mistrust = fear of others
–Turns life into ‘a perpetuall warre of
every man against his neighbor’

20. Political Authority
• Was Hobbes’s pessimism justified?
– Critics
• If we look around us, we can find enough evidence of
people trusting, cooperating, and even helping each
other with nothing expected in return, without any
involvement by the state
– E.g. group of neighbor may decide to repair a derelict
playground, form a team, divide up the work, without any
legal agreement or means of enforcement

21. Political Authority
• Although Hobbes has low opinion of human
nature, his real point…
– In the climate of fear that would follow the
breakdown of authority, the kinder, more trusting,
side of human nature would be destroyed
– And from what we know of human behavior when
people are caught up in civil war and other
situations in which their survival is at stake, he
seems to have been right

22. Political Authority
We need political authority because it
gives us the security that allows us to
trust other people, and in a climate of
trust people are able to cooperate to
produce all those benefits that Hobbes
listed as signally lacking in the ‘natural
condition’

23. Political Authority
• But how can we create authority where it
does not exist?
– Hobbes envisaged everyone gathering together
and covenanting with one another to establish a
sovereign who would rule them from that day
forward; alternatively, they might submit
themselves individually to a powerful man

24. Political Authority
• Anarchists
– Say societies can govern themselves perfectly well
without political authority
– The state is essentially a racket run for the benefit
of those who hold positions of power
– Believe social cooperation is possible in the
absence of political authority

25. Political Authority
• Anarchists
– Two directions
• Towards community
• Towards the market

26. Political Authority
• Towards community – Communitarian
anarchists
– Communities as the building blocks that make
trust and cooperation between people possible
• Small community
– Social order is easy to maintain; makes it possible to have
cooperation
– One of the most important human motives is a desire to be
accepted and respected by those around you, even if people
are not saints

27. Political Authority
• Towards community – Communitarian
anarchists
– It can also be attained in a larger scale
• Small communities will agree and collaborate to
exchange services with one another
• These communities voluntarily know that if they break
that agreement, other communities won’t be able to
cooperate with them in the future.

28. Political Authority
• Towards community – Communitarian
anarchists
– That makes them believe that there is no need for
a central authority to tell people what to do – the
system will be effectively self-policing

29. Political Authority
• Critics
– What is wrong with this peaceful picture of life
without the state?
• It is no longer applicable in this modern times
– Societies are highly mobile
» There’s a need for a legal system that will track down and
punish people

30. Political Authority
• Critics
– Cooperation between communities is also less
straightforward than the anarchist picture
supposes
• For loyalty to your own community frequently goes
along with a fairly intense distrust of others, and
agreements may therefore collapse
• We need the state – can impose solution: it can require
each person or each community to contribute a certain
amount, say through taxation.

31. Political Authority
• Towards market – Market anarchists
(Libertarians)
– We could contract and pay individually for the
services that the state now provides
– Including crucially for personal protection
• In the absence of the state, agencies would offer to
protect clients and their property – includes retrieving
property that had been stolen, enforcing contracts, and
obtaining compensation for personal injury.

32. Political Authority
• E.g. If my neighbor steals, I would call my
protective agency
– What if the neighbor disputes my claim and calls
his agency which may be different from mine?
• If the two agencies cannot agree, they may refer the
case to an arbitrator, who again would charge for
services
• After all it is not in the interest of either agency to get
into a fight

33. Political Authority
• There would be…
– Primary market – protective services
– Secondary market – arbitration services

34. Political Authority
• Critics
– It is impossible for everyone to sign up with the
same protective agency. And since there is no
authority proper, the other party can always fight
back because it is not obliged to recognize the
agency of the other party
– Each agency would need force to protect their
clients’ rights
• This would mean that increasingly disputes would have
to be settled by physical force, with the risk to ordinary
people of being caught in the cross-fire

35. Political Authority
• We would be slipping back into Hobbes’s
condition of
– “Warre where every man is enemy to every man”

36. Political Authority
• And in this condition…
– The only rational decision for each person is to
sign up with the agency that is likely to win the
most fights
• Result: to create a body with the power and authority
to impose the same body of rules on everyone – in
other words, we would inadvertently have recreated
the state

37. Political Authority
• The other services that the state now provides
would also be handed over to the market
– Health insurance, pay for education, pay to use
toll roads, etc

38. Political Authority
• There is another problem with relying on the
market to carry out all the functions that
states now perform
• Provision of what are called ‘public goods’ – benefits
that everyone enjoys and that no one can be excluded
from enjoying
– Clean air, water, access to roads, parks, etc
» These goods are created either by imposing restrictions
on people or by raising taxes and using the revenue to
pay environmental protection, transport systems, etc

39. Political Authority
• Could these goods be provided through an
economic market?
– Critics
• The market operates on the basis that people pay for
goods and services they want to use while with public
goods, they are provided for everyone whether they
pay or not
• But it is very tempting to free ride

40. Political Authority
• We need Political authority with the power to
compel in order to ensure that these goods
are provided to everyone fairly, and there is
maintenance and no delays.

41. Political Authority
• Therefore, since neither communities nor
markets can replace political authority and its
embodiment, the state…
–WE NEED POLITICAL AUTHORITY.

42. Political Authority
• But there is still one crucial question that
needs to be answered…
– Why should I obey it, when it tells me to do things
that dislike or disapprove of (e.g. taxes us)?

43. Political Authority
• Political Philosophers call this…
– ‘The Problem of Political Obligation’

44. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Why should we obey the law?
– Of course, one reason is we are likely to be
punished if we don’t
• But we are looking for a more principled reason and
some philosophers conclude that the problem is
insoluble but others have tried to provide positive
solutions

45. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Two solutions
– Consent approach
– Appeal to fairness or ‘fair play’

46. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Consent approach: First solution claims…
– We are obliged to obey because we have agreed
or consented to do so
• E.g. I joined a local soccer club. I turn up for the match,
but instead of playing by the rules, I insist on picking up
the ball and running with it because my argument is
that the game is more fun if I do so. Club members
would no doubt be highly angry. And they would say
that by joining the club, I am agreeing to play football
by the normal rules whether or not I have signed an
explicit agreement to that effect. Anyone who joins
implicitly accepts the prevailing rules

47. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Let’s transfer the argument to the state
– Generally speaking, people do not choose to join
states: they are required to obey them whether
they like it or not
• In what sense do they give their consent?

48. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Hobbes:
– We choose to belong to the state because it is
preferable to the state of nature where life, as we
saw, is ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ and it doesn’t
matter how the state arises
• We consent to the authority to escape a worse fate

49. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Problem:
– But Hobbes’s argument stretches the idea of
consent beyond recognition
– And take note that the football club example was
compelling because of the fact that I freely chose
to join
• Later writers rejected his argument and tried to find
something other than the mere fact of subjection to
the state which could use to indicate our consent to the
law

50. The Problem of Political Obligation
• John Locke (Second Treatise of Government,
1689):
– We all accept benefits from the state, and our
acceptance can be treated as a form of consent
• E.g. since one of the chief functions of the state is to
protect our property, when we acquire it by purchase
of inheritance, we are also tacitly consenting to the
state’s jurisdiction over that property, and therefore to
its law

51. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Problem:
– We really have little choice about accepting these
benefits: we cannot live without property, we
cannot escape from the state without travelling
the highway to the border
• Still stretching the idea of consent too far to say that
anyone who enjoys state benefits is giving her consent,
and obliging himself to obey the law

52. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Other ideas
– When we take part in elections, we agree to
comply with the government that emerges and
the laws it enacts.
• We do at least have a free choice as to whether to vote
or not, and there would be no point in holding elections
unless people recognized the government that
emerged as legitimate

53. The Problem of Political Obligation
• But unfortunately, there still seems a gap
between voting and registering your consent.
– What if you deeply disagree with both parties, but
vote because you think that one is slightly less bad
than the other? Or what if you think that although
you have in a sense consented to the overall
package of policies that the winning party has
announced in its manifesto, there are few items
you find unacceptable – and you have no choice
to vote on these individually?

54. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Perhaps the voters’ consent can help explain
why governments have legitimate authority,
but not why people have an obligation to obey
the law.

55. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Appeal to fairness of ‘fair play’
– E.g. A group of us are living in a house with a
shared kitchen. Every week or so, one of the
residents tidies the kitchen and gives the pans and
the surfaces a really thorough clean. Now,
everyone else has done the cleaning routine and it
is my turn.

56. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Why ought I to do this?
– I have benefited from the work the others have
put in and so I ought to carry my share of the cost
too – manual labour. If I don’t take my turn, I’ll be
taking advantage of the other residents, and that’s
unfair.

57. The Problem of Political Obligation
• There’s no need to assume that I have
agreed/consented to take part in cleaning rota
– My obligation stems directly from the fact that I
am the beneficiary of a practice that requires each
person to contribute in turn

58. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Let’s transfer the idea to political obligation
– Keeping the law, and complying with political
authority more generally, means forgoing
opportunities that would otherwise be available
to you.
• Each of us would prefer to do exactly what he pleases –
respecting other people’s rights, paying taxes, and
observing traffic laws

59. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Compliance is a benefit to others.
– When you pay your taxes, the rest of us benefit
from the roads, schools, and hospitals that the
taxes are used to pay for.
– When you stop at the red light, you make it safer
for other motorists to cross on green.
• So it looks as though the person who breaks the law
but benefits from the fact that other people are
observing it is behaving unfairly in just the same way as
the person who uses the kitchen but won’t take his turn
at cleaning it.

60. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Difficulties on justifying. First…
– We have to show that the benefits the state
provides really are benefits for everyone
• E.g. what if the laws protect property, but only some
people are property owners? What if taxes are being
used to fund art galleries and many people care
nothing for art?

61. The Problem of Political Obligation
• The argument can work, however, so long as
the whole package of benefits makes
everyone better off and are shared reasonably
fairly among all the people whose compliance
makes the system of authority possible.

62. The Problem of Political Obligation
• Second…
– What would a fair distribution of social benefits
look like, given that people have very different
needs, abilities, preferences, and so forth? And if
the way that benefits are actually distributed in
societies today falls very far short of this ideal, can
we still say that everyone has an obligation to
obey the law in order to maintain a fair practice?

63. The Problem of Political Obligation
• It seems that the preferred solution requires
us to tackle the issue of SOCIAL JUSTICE.