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Ake on Political Obligation and Political Dissent: A Gloss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Bernard Wand
Affiliation:
Carleton University

Extract

As the background to his view that the liberal democratic theory of political obligation implies, under appropriate circumstances, not a right but a duty to resist one's government, Ake provides a judicious account not only of liberal democratic theory but also of utilitarian and legal positivist theory. None the less, his three synopses reveal the almost inevitable hazards of such accounts. The issue is not merely a historical one, for in each case the synoptic account determines the direction which his argument takes.

Type
Communication
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1970

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References

1 Ake, Claude, “Political Obligation and Political Dissent,” this JOURNAL, II, 2 (June 1969), 245–55.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 250.

3 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge, 1967), 289Google Scholar, sec. 7.

4 For an elaboration of the distinction between obligations which arise out of social transactions and those which are due to the quality of an action, see Hart, H. L. A., “Are There Any Natural Rights,” Philosophical Review, 55 (1955), 175–91Google Scholar, reprinted in Political Philosophy, ed. Quinton, Anthony (Oxford, 1967), 5366.Google Scholar

5 The Hebraic prophetic tradition is an illuminating example of moral protest against the iniquitous behaviour of those who govern not only without making an appeal to rights but without even the awareness that such an appeal could be made.