This book has argued that our associative obligations are not self–justifying, but invite a larger context of moral reflection, a context that will lead us sometimes to endorse and sometimes to qualify them; and sometimes even to strengthen their demands, given the role that the larger context may call upon states, and their citizens, to accept. Defenders of associative ties have, of course, resisted this initial contextualizing move, and they have been right to do so, it was acknowledged, when associations have been theorized as nothing but vehicles for the exchange of benefits – clearly, they are more than that. While the conferring of benefits may be a good way of justifying the existence of associations in general, the legitimacy of particular associations rests, rather – it was claimed – on the fact that, in rendering their members vulnerable in several important respects, they can rightly call on their members to exercise special concern for each other. Groups of citizens are particularized by shared exposure to risk. Such a view is best captured by a revised version of social contract theory, one that pictures political society in terms of an implied waiver of background rights, a waiver by virtue of which co–citizens acquire special obligations in return for subscription to an inherently risky project.

That picture of political society, however, introduces a global dimension of concern – “cosmopolitan regard.”