Diasporas and political obligation.

Abstract

In an essay on the state of political theory, Isaiah Berlin (1969: 7) suggests that ‘the most fundamental of all political questions’ is ‘why should anyone obey anyone else?’ Similarly, A. P. d’Entrèves (1959: 3) claims that ‘the history of political theory is to me first and foremost the history of the attempts to solve the problem of political obligation’. The problem of political obligation has been called ‘the fundamental or central problem of political philosophy’ (Dagger 1977: 86). John Horton (2010: 1–2), in his introductory book about political obligation, defines it as the relationship ‘between the people and their political community’ and ‘about whether we can properly be understood to have some ethical bond with our polity, and if so how this manifests itself’.