GENERACIÓN Y PRESTACIÓN DEL SERVICIO 7.1.1 Generalidades

Philosophical anarchists have had little difficulty in exposing grave diffi- culties with all the main arguments favored by theorists of political obligation.5 _{Apart from arguments based on duties to support just insti-}

tutions, whose limitations we have already noted, discussion has centered on four main grounds for political obligation.

The first, which founds political obligations upon the consent of the governed, is at once the most natural and yet most obviously flawed option. It seems initially promising because personal consent is often a very simple way to establish that agents have certain obligations. Suppose, for example, there is dispute about whether I owe X a sum of money for a service he has rendered. Debate would be quickly ended if a valid written contract came to light establishing that I agreed to pay X the relevant amount for his services. But it is hard to believe that we can resolve questions about our purported political obligations in this way, for the simple reason that very few if any citizens have signaled their consent to political rule. And, as we noted early in chapter 4, the idea that

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we can infer citizens’ ‘‘tacit’’ consent from their continued residence within a jurisdiction seems equally implausible.6

A second sort of argument, often dubbed ‘‘associative,’’ appeals to the sort of communitarian or particularist arguments we encountered in the previous chapter.7 Immersion within rich cultures, associative theorists suggest, both powerfully shapes members’ sense of identity and character- istically socializes them into complex webs of obligation. Under these conditions of rich association, a commitment to meeting these com- munal obligations becomes inextricably bound up with fidelity to one’s sense of self and maintaining the integrity of one’s culture. The asso- ciative approach to political obligation attempts to legitimate claims to political authority by arguing that socialization within national poli- tical cultures automatically generates communal obligations of this sort. According to its proponents, citizens who shirk the political obligations conventionally recognized within their national culture can do so only by denying who they really are.

An attraction of associative arguments is that, if sound, they might explain the particularity of our purported political obligations. But despite this advantage, arguments along these lines nonetheless seem extremely unpromising. Even if we grant its premise, and accept that socialization into rich, culturally self-aware associations entails the acknowledgment of a web of obligation, it is very unclear, for reasons discussed in the previous chapter, that citizens of modern states share any such rich cultural matrix. For these same reasons, the argument is also hard to reconcile with the bureaucratic character of modern state authority. It may be plausible to claim that a lapsed Muslim who no longer prays five times a day in the direction of Mecca is somehow denying a core element of his identity. But it seems bizarre to say the same of someone who objects to having his car inspected annually, as required by the local department of transportation. (Perhaps he is a mechanic himself and is competent to make his own judgments about the roadworthiness of his car.) The premise of this associative argument, too, is shaky. Our discussion of Pacifica and Atlantis in chapter 1 established that appeals to conventional moral beliefs, even widely accepted ones, raise the question of justification.

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Hume (1985).

Pointing out that members of a political community recognize such- and-such as an obligation, a duty, a requirement of justice, or whatever, is the beginning, not the end, of the discussion. At best, such reports establish that certain expectations purport to be genuine obligations; but they cannot by themselves vindicate these claims. Simply asserting that agents socialized into particular associations already recognize a web of obligation similarly raises the crucial question of whether ultimately they should recognize and conform to its expectations.

A third argument appeals to debts of gratitude. States provide benefits (security, law and order, national defense, social insurance schemes, etc.). In return, we owe them obedience as a matter of gratitude. But this suggestion also seems hopeless. While receiving benefits may require some gesture of gratitude, it is quite unclear why submission to the authority of the state should be an appropriate gesture of gratitude for any benefits it confers upon us. You have me over for dinner, and no doubt this obligates me to write a thank-you note, and perhaps to reciprocate at some future date. But it seems very strange to predicate political obligation on such points of etiquette. And anyway, surely your kindness in this case does not give you the right to expect that I cook you dinner upon demand, though that seems more closely analogous to the sorts of rights actually claimed by political authorities.

A deeper problem with this proposal is that it assumes a wholly unreal- istic picture of the relation between recipients and conferrers of public benefits. It is misleading to suppose that states start out with a bundle of ‘‘benefits’’ that they then, out of the kindness of their hearts, choose to confer benevolently upon their citizens. Apart from the questionable assumption that institutions can be said to have motives like generosity or benevolence, this view overlooks the crucial complication that the state has these benefits to confer only because of prior sacrifices it has imposed on citizens. The state would not be in a position to supply a system of law and order, national health care, and the rest, had it not already taxed its citizens to raise the necessary revenues. This suggests that the grati- tude argument conceives the problem in an upside-down way. The question should not be why the state’s largesse obligates me, but why it has the right to expect me to participate in its benefit-conferring projects in the first place. But far from resolving it, this simply reintroduces the original problem.

The fourth and certainly most promising argument turns on an appeal to fairness.8Suppose that everyone in some group accepts certain benefits from a cooperative arrangement, but that the provision of these benefits requires that participants in the scheme assume certain burdens. For example, everyone in our neighborhood freely uses the pleasant scenic lake around which it is built, but it will remain scenic and pleasant only if members of the community contribute to funds to cover the costs of keeping it clean and tidy. The Snidvong family frequently swims in the lake, but refuses to pay the maintenance fee that everyone else pays. This seems unfair: the Snidvongs are accepting a benefit but unfairly failing to do their part in maintaining it. Proponents of the fairness argument contend that our political obligations can be accounted for in this way. Having accepted the benefits of public association with their fellows (national defense, systems of law and order, democratic representa- tion, welfare programs, etc.), citizens have obligations to assume a fair share of the burdens necessary to their provision.

But while it seems clear that obligations of fairness can arise in this way, doubts center on the question of whether citizens can normally be said to have ‘‘accepted’’ the benefits provided by the state.9 It is not as if they usually have much choice in the matter. And it hardly seems fair simply to thrust benefits on people and then demand that they contribute their fair share of the costs. After all, this is not how things stand in the case of the Snidvongs, for they freely choose to take advantage of the lake and thus clearly accept benefits directly attributable to the sacrifices of their neighbors. But it is unclear that this is true with respect to publicly provided benefits.

Consider, for example, systems of democratic representation. These schemes (an electoral apparatus and the institutions of representative democracy) are quite expensive to provide and maintain, and so citizens of democratic societies are required to make significant contributions to covering their costs. Can we plausibly regard any obligations I have to make such contributions as analogous to those borne by the Snidvongs? Do citizens accept the ‘‘benefits’’ of representative democracy as do the

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See Hart (1967); Rawls (1964).

Snidvongs those of the scenic lake? Presumably the relevant ‘‘benefit’’ is the opportunity to voice one’s political preferences in elections. But suppose Snodgrass has no interest in voting. Perhaps he regards the democratic process as a corrupt farce and wants no part of it, or there are no political parties that represent his political opinions, or he believes that his vote is so unlikely to have any effect on the outcome that it is not worth the bother. Surely it is difficult here to maintain that Snodgrass has ‘‘accepted’’ the benefits of representative democracy, and correspondingly hard to believe that he has obligations of fairness to cooperate in its provision. Moreover, since many citizens choose not to participate in democratic elections, it cannot be argued that Snodgrass is in any sense strange or unusual. Nor does the Australian practice of requiring citizens to vote provide any solution. For in this case that would amount simply to thrust- ing an unwanted ‘‘benefit’’ on Snodgrass and then demanding payment for it. This seems a parody of fairness rather than its realization.

Unfortunately for the fairness argument, it is at least reasonable to think that the situation of citizens who receive public benefits from states more often resembles Snodgrass’s predicament than that of the Snidvongs and their neighbors. Notwithstanding its relevance in other contexts, then, it is not clear that a principle of fairness gets us very far towards vindicating citizens’ obligations to contribute to the provision of many familiar public benefits and services.10

Efforts to overcome these objections and resuscitate one or other of these grounds for political obligation will doubtless continue. But it is difficult not to agree with the philosophical anarchists that all face very serious obstacles.