Abstract

The central questions underlying The Problem of Political Authority focus on the issue of what justifies the political authority relationship central to the state: What is the difference between sheer coercive force and political authority? Is there a difference? Is de jure political authority conceptually coherent? If so, what is it like? In short, What is the difference between domination and rule? ;The liberal canon that the authority of the state is justified by the consent of the governed is presented. It is argued that this thesis, as expounded in both occurrent and hypothetical versions of social contract theory, is inadequate as an answer to The Problem of Political Authority. The social contract theorist is correct in insisting that political authority must be justified by a relation between ruler and ruled; he is incorrect in holding that this relationship must be founded in individual consent. Throughout this critique, it is argued that the central difficulties of liberal mainstream social contract theory can be traced to its individualistic, voluntaristic, and reductionist approach to theorizing about the body politic. ;A non-contractarian, duty-based general theory of de jure authority is developed. It is argued that authority ontologically presupposes what are termed "supravisory duties", duties which by their nature entail extended spheres of de jure autonomy with respect to the behavior and/or the consequences of the behavior of others. This is central to the subsequent theory of political authority. For it is necessary to first understand what it is for non-political authority to be justified before we can meaningfully ask whether the relations which structure the body politic can support a coherent conception of de jure political authority. ;The concept of authority developed earlier is situated into the political milieu. It is argued that, ultimately, political authority is justified by the political authority holder's more or less circumscribed supravisory duty to tend to the public interest. The theory presented is unabashedly Rousseauian, though the volitional and consent features of Rousseau's concept of the general will and the body politic are largely "neutralized" by developing an acceptable characterization of the public and the public interest, helped by the basic insight of John Dewey's conception of the public.