Joint Political Rights and Obligations

Abstract

In this paper it is argued that: (1) political rights and obligations are a species of institutional (moral) right and obligation (respectively) and are not, therefore, natural rights and obligation; (2) political rights and obligations in a given polity are not simply aggregates of individual rights and obligations rather they are joint political rights and obligations; (3) the exercise of these joint rights, and the concomitant discharging of these joint obligations, is (i) a collective good in itself; (ii) productive of the collective good of legitimate government, and (iii) productive of the collective good of the coordination and regulation of other social institutions (government is a meta-institution), and (4) the procedure of voting in a democratic polity is a joint institutional mechanism – understood as a particular construction out of the notion of a joint action – and a specific expression of the joint right and obligation to engage in political participation.