Rethinking Political Obligation Moral Principles, Communal Ties, Citizenship

What are the grounds for and limits to obedience to the state? Dorota Mokrosinska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories. The theory of political obligation developed in the book extends the scope of the contemporary debate on political obligation by arguing that political obligation can be binding even under the jurisdiction of unjust states. The arguments pursued in the book are illustrated with the results of sociological research concerning the reasons that governed people's attitudes to the authoritarian communist regimes in East Europe viz. communist Poland. This book provides the first detailed argument of how a theory of political obligation can apply to subjects of an unjust state.

DOROTA MOKROSINSKA works as a Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She obtained her doctorate degree (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam winning the 2008 National Biennal Dissertation Prize awarded by the Dutch School in Ethics. With a prestigious grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, she spent time as a visiting scholar at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.