Do Partisans Have Special Political Obligations?

In this paper I argue that regardless of whether ordinary citizens or residents of a polity have any political obligations (i.e. any moral duty to obey the law), partisanship (i.e. participation in politics through political parties) generates specific and sui generis political obligations. My analysis proceeds as follows. In the first section I argue that partisans’ voluntary decision to undertake the ‘positional duties’ of partisanship places them under special political obligations. However, the notion of ‘partisanship’ presents different meanings across different polities, within the same polity and often even within the same party, and not all forms of partisanship are voluntary in nature. This renders a voluntarist account of partisan political obligations limited in scope. In the second section I therefore claim that the positional duties of partisanship acquire the status of political obligations because all partisans enjoy special privileges and benefits which derive from their participation in party politics at different levels. These special political obligations are justified on the basis of the principle of fairness (Hart 1955; Rawls 1971; Klosko 2005) and are proportionate to the benefits that partisans receive. The fairness argument, I claim, complements and reinforces the voluntarist account of partisan political obligations. In the third section I argue that the special political obligations of partisans are only binding when partisans operate under political institutions which are both sufficiently just and fair. I claim that liberal democracies are sufficiently just but that the fairness of their political institutions is often inadequate. I therefore sketch the general guidelines for institutional reforms which may contribute in rendering such institutions fairer. I conclude that when sufficiently just and fair political institutions exist, citizens’ participation in party politics can contribute in reinforcing both their political obligations and their motivation to comply with the laws of their political community.