A Political Conception of Disobedience

A “political” conception of civil disobedience is one that identifies the features that make disobedience justified with reference to the presence or absence of legitimate authority, rather than invoking “extra-political” principles such as the criteria of defensive ethics. In this vein, it defines civil disobedience as law-breaking whose aim is to achieve changes in law or policy that is perceived to be unjust, in a manner that effectively communicates both the belief that the legal system as a whole is legitimate as well as respect for the legal system. ‘Effective’ communication does not require successful communication, which depends on actual uptake by the addressees. Communication is effective when it is such that it would be normally understood by competent members of the political community. The substantive criteria (such as publicity, non-evasion, nonviolence, last resort) fall out of the success conditions of effectively communicating belief in and respect for the legitimate authority of the extant political institutions. Since effective communication of a belief or attitude has a significant conventional dimension, this definition allows for the possibility that the substantive criteria may vary over time and place, although there will be significant pressure towards some core elements, such as non-evasion, nonviolence, or last resort. It might be tempting to think that under conditions of illegitimate rule, the principles of interpersonal morality alone settle whether and when it is morally permissible to break the law, i.e., that all and only laws that correspond to objectively correct moral requirements are to be obeyed. However, I suggest that this is not so. The conditions of illegitimacy are in some ways more permissive of law-breaking than interpersonal morality, while in other ways they are more restrictive. They are more permissive because there is some value in defying illegitimate law just because it is illegitimate, regardless of its content. But they are more restrictive, because sometimes there are reasons not to break illegitimate law even if doing so would not violate any independent moral requirement, if this could be conducive to reestablishing legitimate authority.