Raz’s “Service Conception” of Authority

Abstract

Abstract According to Joseph Raz, political authority is subject to the same general justificatory conditions as all practical authority. For Raz, political obligation does not rest on some special requirement of membership or fairness in political communities; and there is no general obligation to obey the law. Instead, Raz’s “normal justification” holds that authority (including political authority) is justified if it helps a subject to better conform to reasons that apply to them. This “normal justification condition” has drawn significant commentary in the political obligation literature, but it is only part of the Razian story. This chapter critically examines the relation between the normal justification, Raz’s “independence condition” (which prioritizes living “by one’s own lights”), and a set of “non-moral” constraints tied to the claiming and receiving of authority between persons. Through attention to the combination of these conditions and constraints, I argue that Raz’s reasons-centered account highlights but fails to address the importance of authority’s social dimension, and raises without answering a key concern for a theory of political obligation: what are the limits of legitimate political authority?