The concept of political obligation has been a central debate in political philosophy for centuries, focusing on why individuals ought to obey the state. One argument that has gained attention in recent political theory is the lesser evil argument, which posits that citizens have an obligation to support or obey the state when it is the lesser of two evils. This paper explores both the case for and against the lesser evil argument as a basis for political obligation. By analyzing its implications in terms of ethical theory, practical application, and moral limitations, we aim to assess its viability in justifying political obedience and loyalty in the context of modern democratic governance.

Political obligation, lesser evil argument, political duty

E.g., John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 308; Thomas Christiano, The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 232; Massimo Renzo, ‘State Legitimacy and Self-Defence’, Law and Philosophy 30(5) (2011): 575–601, p. 578, fn. 13.

David Lyons, ‘Moral Judgment, Historical Reality, and Civil Disobedience’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 27(1) (1998): 31–49; pp. 35–36; Candice Delmas, A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 28–29; Erin Pineda, Seeing Like an Activist: Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 32–34. See also Charles Mills, ‘Rawls on Race/Race in Rawls’, Southern Journal of Philosophy 47(S1) (2009): 161–184.

E.g., John Rawls, ‘Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play’, in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 117–129, p. 117.

We use obligation and duty interchangeably to refer to a moral requirement. Though the political obligation literature sometimes distinguishes the two—understanding obligations as acquired through voluntary action (like a promise) and duties as applying more generally—it also is common to treat them synonymously. See Richard Dagger, ‘Authority, Legitimacy, and the Obligation to Obey the Law’, Legal Theory 24(2) (2018): 77–102, p. 81.

Examples from the political authority literature, which encompasses political obligation (the duty to obey the state) and legitimacy (the state’s right to rule through coercion), include Elizabeth Anscombe, ‘On the Source of Authority of the State’, Ratio 20(1) (1978): 1–28, pp. 18–28; Christopher Wellman, ‘Liberalism, Samaritanism, and Political Legitimacy’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 25(3) (1996): 211–237, p. 219; Christopher Wellman, ‘Toward a Liberal Theory of Political Obligation’, Ethics 111(4) (2001): 735–759, p. 748; David Copp, ‘The Idea of a Legitimate State’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 28(1) (1999): 3–45, pp. 36–44; Allen Buchanan, ‘Political Legitimacy and Democracy’, Ethics 112(4) (2002): 689–719, pp. 703–709; Renzo, ‘State Legitimacy and Self-Defence’, pp. 585–587.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Noel Malcolm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 320. See also Ben Jones and Manshu Tian, ‘Hobbes’s Lesser Evil Argument for Political Authority’, Hobbes Studies 35(2) (2022): 115–134.

C. H. Wellman, ‘The Space between Justice and Legitimacy’, Journal of Political Philosophy 31(1) (2023): 3–23, p. 21.

Helen Frowe, ‘Lesser-Evil Justifications for Harming: Why We’re Required to Turn the Trolley’, Philosophical Quarterly 68(272) (2018): 460–480, p. 460.

Kerah Gordon-Solmon, ‘How (and How Not) to Defend Lesser-Evil Options’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 20(3–4) (2023): 211–232, pp. 221–222.

See Larry Alexander, ‘Lesser Evils: A Closer Look at the Paradigmatic Justification’, Law and Philosophy 24(6) (2005): 611–643, p. 618; David Rodin, ‘The Lesser Evil Obligation’, in The Ethics of War: Essays, ed. Saba Bazargan and Samuel Rickless (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 28–45; Frowe, ‘Lesser-Evil Justifications for Harming’; Gordon-Solmon, ‘How (and How Not) to Defend Lesser-Evil Options’; Kerah Gordon-Solmon and Theron Plummer, ‘Lesser-Evil Justifications: A Reply to Frowe’, Law and Philosophy 41(5) (2022): 639–646.

Jeff McMahan, Killing in War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 43.

Frowe, ‘Lesser-Evil Justifications for Harming’, p. 462.

Seth Lazar, ‘Necessity in Self-Defense and War’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 40(1) (2012): 3–44, pp. 6–7.

Frances Kamm, ‘The Doctrine of Double Effect: Reflections on Theoretical and Practical Issues’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16(5) (1991): 571–585, p. 571.

Edmond Awad, Sohan Dsouza, Azim Shariff, Iyad Rahwan, and Jean-François Bonnefon, ‘Universals and Variations in Moral Decisions Made in 42 Countries by 70,000 Participants’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117(5) (2020): 2332–2337.

See Max Roser, ‘Ethnographic and Archaeological Evidence on Violent Deaths’, Our World in Data (2013), https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths; José María Gómez, Miguel Verdú, Adela González-Megías, and Marcos Méndez, ‘The Phylogenetic Roots of Human Lethal Violence’, Nature 538 (2016): 233–237.

See Gregory Kavka, ‘Why even Morally Perfect People Would Need Government’, Social Philosophy and Policy 12(1) (1995): 1–18; Renzo, ‘State Legitimacy and Self-Defence’, pp. 586–592.

George Klosko, Political Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 21–42.

E.g., Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 188–197; Wellman, ‘Liberalism, Samaritanism, and Political Legitimacy’; Wellman, ‘Toward a Liberal Theory of Political Obligation’; Renzo, ‘State Legitimacy and Self-Defence’.

Since most states are continuously passing new laws, we do not consider a state altered through its own legal channels as an alternative to an existing state but rather a continuation of it. Section II addresses the question of whether to work within or outside the law in response to a state’s injustice.