In this important new book, Richard Dagger wades into not one but two sprawling debates: the debate concerning the grounds of political obligation, on the one hand, and the debate concerning the justification of punishment, on the other. These two debates have developed mostly independently of one another in contemporary political theory and philosophy. According to Dagger, this division of labor is a mistake and a hindrance to efforts to resolve the central issues on either topic. The key to progress is recognizing that grounding political obligation and justifying punishment are in fact the same problem or, perhaps more precisely, flip sides of the same problem. As Dagger says on the very first page, surely “we have a right to punish lawbreakers” precisely because “we have a right to expect people to live up to their political obligations” (p. 1).

Once stated, the link between these two debates seems obvious. How is it that so few have perceived it? Or perhaps some have, but without seriously attempting to make anything of it. After all, the very scope and complexity of the two literatures present a daunting obstacle to anyone aiming to bridge them. All the more impressive, then, that Dagger has managed the feat with such success.

The book is divided into three parts. Roughly, part one develops a theory of political obligation, part two a theory of punishment, and part three brings them together. The longest and most developed is the first part: Chapters 1–3 provide an extensive overview of the standing debates on political obligation. Dagger cautions that these chapters are not meant to provide a balanced survey of the field, and no doubt experts will quibble with this or that aspect of the discussion. On the whole, however, the presentation is exceptionally clear and thorough, and it will serve as a useful guide for many.

Chapter 4 is the heart of the book. It is no secret that Dagger believes fair play is the master theory that can simultaneously ground political obligation and justify the punishment of wrongdoing. Fair play theory has been around for a while, of course: H. L. A. Hart and John Rawls first discussed it a half-century ago. Simply put, the idea is that because we all benefit from the system of social cooperation, it seems only fair that each of us does our part to support it. But the theory has been subject to many criticisms, and even Rawls subsequently backed away from it in part. One well-known problem is that merely receiving a benefit one did not ask for or voluntarily accepts seems insufficient to generate an obligation to contribute to the supply of that benefit for others. Another is that, especially under non-ideal conditions, it may not be the case that everyone benefits from participation in the system of social cooperation or, at any rate, not relative to many other more equitable alternative arrangements.

In chapter 4, Dagger proposes a crucial adjustment to the fair play theory. Previous iterations of the theory more or less supposed that fair play was about the distribution of benefits and burdens, where benefits were things like income and opportunities and burdens were things like taxes and public service. Instead, Dagger argues that we should think about fair play as referring to the joint participation of citizens in the practices that produce and maintain the rule of law. The rule of law is a public good as defined by economists: it is nonexcludable, in that those who fail to contribute to its production and maintenance cannot be prevented from enjoying its benefits; and it is nonrivalrous, in that its enjoyment by some does not detract from its enjoyment by others. Thus any given citizen benefits from the fact that others can be expected to respect the law whether or not she respects the law herself, and the fact that she does so benefit does not diminish the benefit other citizens receive from that same general expectation.

With this revised account of fair play in hand, the various pieces of the puzzle fall into place with marvelous ease. Because we all benefit from the rule of law, we all have an obligation to do our part in producing and maintaining that same public good: in practice, this entails that we all lie under a prima facie obligation to share the burden of self-restraint under law. In making law-abiding use of the general peace and security the system of law provides, we are no mere passive recipients of a benefit we have not asked for, but rather active participants in the joint project of creating the rule of law itself, even if we are not in every individual case fully conscious of our particular contribution. And because the target of our obligation is the production and maintenance of the rule of law as such, rather than any particular law that distributes scarce benefits and burdens, our obligation to respect the law in general is not defeated by the availability of more equitable alternative social arrangements. On the contrary, fair play has an aspirational dimension, as Dagger puts it, because we should always strive to improve the fairness of the cooperative enterprise in which we, as citizens, are already actively engaged.

Part two, on punishment, is shorter than the first part. Chapter 5 provides an overview of the literature on punishment. Chapter 6 parallels chapter 4 in presenting the main argument for fair play in justifying the punishment of wrongdoing. Crucially, Dagger does not claim that the specific wrongness of any given crime is fully explained by fair play considerations: murder, for example, is wrong for many reasons, only one of which is the fact that it represents a serious failure to accept the burden of self-restraint under the law. Importantly, however, fair play provides a sufficient justification for punishing crime. The criminal not only harms his specific victim but he also undermines faith in the assumption that people will generally respect the law. Punishment reimposes the burden of self-restraint on the criminal, communicating to him the expectation that everyone should contribute to the creation and maintenance of the rule of law; simultaneously, by making the threat of punishment credible, it communicates to other citizens that their future contributions to the creation and maintenance of the rule of law will not be in vain. Chapter 7 applies this general framework to debates concerning over-incarceration, recidivism, punitive restitution, and the disenfranchisement of felons.

Part three is relatively brief. After responding in chapter 8 to various theories that attempt to separate political authority from political obligation, chapter 9 draws the various parts of the argument together and restates them with a special emphasis on the connections among them.

The overall picture is compelling. More expert readers may detect flaws in the details, but on the whole the internal reasoning appears strong. Some external questions, however, might be raised. First, if we suppose there exists a natural duty of justice, why do we need a theory of political obligation? The standard answer, to which Dagger subscribes, is that the natural duty of justice cannot explain why we have particular obligations to our own polity and not to others. This assumption may limit the appeal of the project to those readers of a more cosmopolitan bent who hold that particular associative obligations, if they exist, must arise from downstream considerations. Second, Dagger gives little consideration to consequentialist theories of punishment. The book is long enough as it stands, of course, but again its appeal may be limited to those already disposed to reject that approach. None of this detracts, however, from the central achievement of the book, which is to present an account more attractive and powerful than any presently on offer of fair play as a theory both of political obligation and punishment.