Do citizens have even a prima facie moral obligation to obey the law of a reasonably just state? Most contemporary political theorists think not. George Klosko disagrees with these philosophical anarchists, and in this book he explains why. In the first, longer section, he builds upon his earlier work, The Principle of Fairness and Political Obligation (1992, new ed. 2004), to produce a new, multistranded argument for the existence of a moral obligation to obey the law. In the last four chapters, Klosko examines, empirically, what constitutional courts in three liberal states, and a selection of ordinary people in the United States, have to say about the nature and foundations of political obligations.

In Klosko's view, a successful theory of political obligation must satisfy four conditions. First, it should show that all or nearly all the members of society are obliged to obey its laws (i.e., obligations should be general). Second, it should yield obligations that are limited by a more fundamental respect for basic rights. Third, it should demonstrate that governments may validly oblige citizens to support all or nearly all of the wide range of activities normally undertaken by the governments of modern, Western democracies (i.e., obligations should be comprehensive). Finally, the successful theory should explain why citizens have obligations specific to one society in particular.

Klosko agrees with the consensus of the literature that consent cannot successfully be invoked to justify the existence of political obligation in any modern state. Few of us have expressly consented to the institutions and laws by which we are governed, and, given the high costs of exit, tacit consent cannot reasonably be inferred from anyone's refusal to emigrate. Although some more sophisticated consent theories have been developed to answer these, and other, familiar objections, Klosko devotes a chapter to demonstrating, persuasively, why these reformist consent theories too must fail.

The foundation of the work's constructive argument is “the principle of fairness,” which holds, according to the pithy formulation Klosko borrows from John Rawls, that “we are not to gain from the cooperative labor of others without doing our fair share” (p. 5, quoting Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p. 112). It is easy to see that this principle holds when the benefits cooperatively produced can be restricted to those who have contributed to their production. Thus, for example, it would be obviously wrong to take produce from a communal garden one had done nothing to cultivate or otherwise support.

Klosko argues that this principle of fairness can also operate to generate obligations with respect to “non-excludable” public goods, such as clean air and national defense, which will be enjoyed by everyone if they are provided to anyone. The argument for the existence of political obligations grounded upon this principle proceeds in two steps. First, the author shows that some of the public goods now supplied by the modern, Western democracies are necessary for the living of minimally adequate lives and are worth the cost of providing them, which, in his view, establishes the existence of an obligation to contribute to their production. Second, he contends that the relevant obligations are owed to the state by showing that the public goods in question can only be supplied by “traditional states,” which he defines as states possessing both an effective monopoly of force within the territory they control and “authority,” understood as the power to create valid obligations (pp. 57–58).

Although the argument from fairness justifies political obligations that are general, it cannot justify obligations to support the provision of goods not strictly essential to the living of adequate lives and so fails the test of comprehensiveness. The principle of fairness is not, however, the only moral principle relevant to the establishment of political obligations. Klosko also invokes two further principles, the natural duty of mutual aid and the common good principle. The first is the relatively familiar principle that all persons have a natural duty to contribute to the well-being of others, when the burdens of doing so are relatively light. The second principle is novel; it holds that the shared provision and enjoyment of necessary goods creates a community, and that members of a community thus constituted are obliged to contribute further to the common good of such a community. If successful, the set of arguments derived from these three principles would, as the author demands at the outset, justify obligations that are general, limited, comprehensive, and particular.

The argument of Political Obligations is often ingenious, and Klosko is particularly effective at demonstrating the weaknesses in many of the critics' arguments against the existence of moral obligations to obey the law. His effort to integrate empirical evidence about what governments and individuals think about obligation is innovative, but the relationship between opinion and moral justification is less straightforward than he seems to suppose. Consider, for example, his argument from the principle of fairness. The crucial step in that argument is the claim that “non-traditional states” or other entities without authority cannot in fact produce the public goods required for acceptable lives. The discussion on this point is disappointingly brief and rather abstract, although the question of which institutions can supply certain goods is an empirical one. The analysis is abstract because Klosko considers nontraditional states as hypothetical, implicitly assuming that the existing liberal states he uses as a point of reference in fact possess authority. But that is precisely the point denied by the philosophical anarchists he aims to refute.

All states indeed claim to wield authority, as the evidence from their legal systems makes plain. But the focus group data Klosko reports suggest that ordinary people do not wholly share the legal system's perspective. The interviewed subjects repeatedly distinguished between laws they felt bound to obey (laws against rape and murder, for example) and laws they felt free to disregard (laws against speeding). In this respect, the individuals' view of obligation resembles the philosophical anarchists' view, as the author concedes. Nevertheless, the laws are widely obeyed in the modern, Western democracies, and essential public goods by and large provided. In other words, existing states may not be the “traditional states” of Klosko's definition, and the success of such states may not in fact demonstrate the practical necessity of attributing authority to the state.

Whether or not all its arguments ultimately succeed, Political Obligations poses sufficiently powerful challenges to the philosophical anarchist position that anyone working on questions about political legitimacy and the authority of law will need to consult it.