Obligation

(obligations)

To have an obligation is to be bound to undertake some action as a result of a law, contract, promise, agreement or duty. Almost all people, apart from radical libertarians, recognise that some kinds of obligations to others are important; however, the nature of those obligations and the extent to which obligations should be central to understanding politics are matters of great debate. Conservatives tend to make obligations between people, often expressed as duties or responsibilities owed to others, central to their understanding of how politics and society ought to work. By contrast, liberals tend to focus on rights rather than obligations as the basis for political and social interactions. Socialists and social democrats have also tended to play down obligations, although recent ‘third way’ social democratic thinking has stressed obligation.

Australian political debates about obligations have often focussed on the obligations that society or the government can legitimately demand of citizens and the circumstances in which citizens can claim a right and even an obligation to disobey government laws. Are Australians obliged to obey all laws, or can they legitimately appeal to social, ethical or religious obligations in order to disobey some laws? These questions have arisen in contexts such as government conscription of young Australian men to fight in the Vietnam War, citizen participation in unlawful protest actions, and the leaking of confidential government documents by public servants.