A Reappraisal of the Gratitude Account of Political Obligation

• In Event: Rights, Obligations, and Authority

Abstract

The paper revisits the so-called gratitude account of political obligation (Walker 1988) according to which people have political obligation (a duty of compliance with political authority claims) because they are indebted to their state for benefiting from its services and they are rightly requited when they fail to comply. This account which has a long and venerable history has never enjoyed prominence in scholarly views but it often figured in political debates, especially when it came to the question of obligations of newcomers (immigrants, women, people from lower classes, ethnic or religious minorities). As the question of the laws from Plato's Crito - 'Are you not grateful?' - suggests, appeals to gratitude normally imply that the full membership status of such people can be seen as conditional on the visible and willing demonstration of their gratefulness to the polity. In fact, what makes the gratitude account unique among the various accounts of political obligation is that it requires more from people than mere compliance. It demands them to go the extra mile for their polity and also offers a simple explanation as to why their polity deserves this extra effort on their part.

The paper will argue that despite its obvious shortcomings (namely, it falls short of providing a freestanding account of political obligation; it is also difficult to distinguish from fair play accounts; and, most damningly, it follows the logic of ‘normativism’ [Fossen 2023] or ‘moralism’ [Szűcs 2023]), the gratitude account still deserves to be taken seriously as it highlights important aspects of the political-ethical phenomenology of political obligation. First, it underscores the fact that no sufficient reason for compliance with political authority claims can be fully external to the motivational set of the subject of political obligation (in this, it resembles the consent and associative accounts while clearly differing from fairness or natural duty accounts). Second, it shows how people might understandably feel compelled to go out of their ways to comply with political authority claims (in, this, however, it differs from consent accounts and is closer to fairness or natural duty accounts). Third, it offers an explanation about how membership is connected to political obligation without any reference to either identity or voluntary commitment (in this, it clearly differs from associative, consent, or fairness on the one hand or natural duty accounts on the other). Fourth, it shows that political obligation is often seen as an expansive phenomenon that expresses demands that go beyond mere compliance and require extra efforts (in this, it seems unique). These aspects are not fully accounted for by other accounts of political obligation or are accounted for by other accounts.

From the fact that the gratitude account successfully accounts for these political-ethical phenomena, it does not follow that gratitude would or could ground political obligation in any ‘moralistic’ or ‘normativist’ sense (in this, A. J. Simmons’ and others’ classical criticisms still seem valid) but that a satisfactory account of political obligation should be able to explain the political-ethical phenomena addressed by the gratitude account. All the more so, because these phenomena are all too often simply overlooked or at least downplayed by other accounts.

It also does not follow from the advantages of the gratitude account that we need to take the gratitude account seriously because we like all its implications. Quite the contrary. It is important to realize how and why the extremely demanding (arguably extortive) nature of the question 'Are you not grateful?' can make the lives of people from marginalized groups especially difficult. Thanks to this, it is as much a practical as a theoretical challenge to find ways to temper the effects of the demands of gratitude by making it clear that any demand of gratitude should be conditional on well-founded reasons for being grateful.

Author

• Zoltan Gabor Szucs, Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences