Disaggregating political authority: what's wrong with Rawlsian civil disobedience?

Jubb, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0956-4000 (2019) Disaggregating political authority: what's wrong with Rawlsian civil disobedience? Political Studies, 67 (4). pp. 955-971. ISSN 0032-3217 doi: 10.1177/0032321718816208

Abstract/Summary

Contemporary philosophical and theoretical discussions of civil disobedience hope to contribute to significant political debates around when and in which forms political dissent, protest and resistance is appropriate. In doing so, they often focus on and criticize John Rawls' work on civil disobedience. However, ignoring the frame in which Rawls discusses civil disobedience has led critics to wrongly attack his theory for being too restrictive when it is more likely to be too permissive. That permissiveness depends on treating any political order which does not come close to fulfilling his theory of justice as absolutely illegitimate. In this sense, Rawls’ theory of political authority is binary and demanding. The problems his theory shares with most others, including his critics’, show that political authority needs to be disaggregated to make sense of the conditions under which different forms of protest and resistance are appropriate.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/80501
Identification Number/DOI	10.1177/0032321718816208
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Politics and International Relations
Publisher	Wiley
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