Is Democracy a viable form of political obligation?

Authors Avatar

Politics Assessed Essay

Is Democracy a viable form of political obligation?

Political Obligation is an issue, which has many different aspects, when broken down. The whole concept of Political Obligation is basically whether or not citizens within a state should abide by a set of laws, which have been derived by the state. The citizen is obliged to obey the laws of the state because the state has sovereign authority; this is the obvious answer to the question as to why the citizen should obey the laws, which have been created, however many arguments to the reasons as to why citizens shouldn’t abide by the laws have also been discussed. There is substancial evidence to support both answers to the question of whether or not citizens should live their lives in accordance with the laws set by the state, and after analysing both sides a conclusion will be reached on whether or not citizens should abide the laws which have been set.

        Democracy is one source of Political Obligation. The term democracy can be used widely and does not seem to have a set definition. It is a highly contested concept; there is no agreed or settled definition of the term. Democracy is seen as popular rule and the whole concept of authority stems from the fact that the leaders are elected. The main thing, which makes democracy such a special form of representation is that, democracy implies both popular participation and government in the public interest, thus making it special from the others due to a government being elected by the people for the people.

Democracy is a viable form of political obligation due to the fact that, the concept of political obligation is whether or not citizens should live by the laws made by the state. The way which democracy becomes a viable form of political obligation is that, due to the way in which a democratic government is run, the whole government or state has been elected, or chosen by the citizens of the state. The fact that the people who legislate the laws have been chosen by the citizens themselves has been used as a main argument as to why people should obey the laws of the state. Democracy is seen as special because it is put as a main reason why we should obey and accept the rules in society, its because they are democratically made. The argument put forward is, if the people who the citizen voted for in the first place produce the laws, then surely the citizen should abide by those laws due to democracy being a fair process.

Join now!

Democracy basically is a concept which points fully towards agreeing with political obligation, therefore saying that citizens should abide by the laws, however there some issues which show that a democratic government cannot fully support political obligation. The problem that sometimes is evident with democracy is that it represents the majority and not the minority. Therefore, what happens to the people who have not elected those people in the state who pass laws through? Do they have to live by the laws, which are set even though they didn’t elect for the people who made them in the first place. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay