State authority without a duty to obey : challenging the assumption of correlativity between legitimate authority and political obligation
| dc.contributor.author | KORSEBERG, Lene Kirstine | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-01-26T11:52:40Z | |
| dc.date.embargo | 2025-01-25 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021 | |
| dc.description | Defence date: 25 January 2021 | en |
| dc.description | Examining Board: Professor Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute); Professor Luís Duarte d’Almeida (University of Edinburgh); Professor Richard Bellamy (University College of London / former EUI); Professor William Edmundson (Georgia State University) | en |
| dc.description.abstract | When analysing the moral relationship between the state and its subjects, the majority of scholars subscribe to the “principle of correlativity”. This is the belief that the state’s political legitimacy and a citizen’s moral duty to obey the law are correlative: if one is established, the other is as well. The aim of this thesis is to challenge the assumption of correlativity. I do this by showing that the legitimacy of the state is not dependent on the existence of a general moral duty to obey the law on part of the state’s subjects. Three distinct interpretations of the “correlativity principle” may be identified in the literature: one logical interpretation and two substantive interpretations. Against the first, I argue that state authority should not be understood as a claim-right to rule, but as a moral power possessed by the state. Against the substantive interpretations, I argue that political obligation is neither sufficient nor necessary to justify state authority. Firstly, the moral duty to obey the law may be thought to arise even in states which actions and conduct clearly are not morally justified. Secondly, the state’s right to issue and enforce law may be explained without reference to a general moral duty to obey the law on part of the subject. Having rejected the “correlativity principle” in both its logical and substantive interpretations, I sketch a theory of legitimate state authority, one that does not rely on the moral duty to obey the law for its justification. I argue that legitimate state authority both represents a minimum threshold to be reached, defined by the state’s protection of basic rights for all, and an ideal to which actual states should strive through the balancing and furthering of individual claims to freedom. | en |
| dc.embargo.terms | 2025-01-25 | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.citation | Florence : European University Institute, 2021 | en |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.2870/956635 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1814/69702 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.orcid.upload | true | * |
| dc.publisher | European University Institute | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | EUI | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | LAW | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | PhD Thesis | en |
| dc.rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | State, The | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Legitimacy of governments | |
| dc.title | State authority without a duty to obey : challenging the assumption of correlativity between legitimate authority and political obligation | en |
| dc.type | Thesis | en |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| eui.subscribe.skip | true | |
| person.identifier.other | 41030 | |
| relation.isAuthorOfPublication | d0e86573-8e11-4d7a-9165-1fbae871c165 | |
| relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery | d0e86573-8e11-4d7a-9165-1fbae871c165 |
