Critiques of State Legitimacy and Political Obligation

Beyond economic and revolutionary anarchism, a distinct strictly philosophical tradition asks whether any state can ever possess genuine authority — the moral right to be obeyed, as opposed to the mere physical power to compel obedience — over the individuals subject to it. David Hume, in his 1748 essay "Of the Original Contract," had already dealt a serious blow to social-contract justifications of political obligation by observing that almost no actual citizen has ever explicitly consented to their government, and that mere continued residence within a state's territory cannot plausibly be read as free, informed agreement to obey it, since emigration is rarely a genuinely open option for most people.