The Practice Account of Political Authority

Abstract

The most fundamental problem of political philosophy is to explain the authority of the state. This article presents a novel account: the practice account of political authority. The practice account belongs to the family of natural duty accounts, but in contrast to other such accounts, it highlights the role that rules of conventional practices can (and must) play in explaining political authority. The idea is that we have a natural right to participate in justifiable conventional practices that secure basic justice and peace, as well as a natural duty to respect this same right in others; that duty explains why the rules of such practices can confer political authority on the state. Other natural duty accounts, the article shows, cannot explain political authority because they fail to provide a working mechanism that links people’s natural duties to the authority of the state.