Skip to content
Pol Science II · Unit 2

Political Obligation — State Authority and the Citizen

Unit 2 of Political Science – II (syllabus: Module II — the concept of political obligation and the command-and-obedience relationship; the grounds of obligation and Raphael’s view; the divine right, social contract, force and prescriptive possession theories with Marx; the problem of obedience to unjust laws, the right of resistance and dissent in Green, Gandhi, Laski, King and Mandela, and satyagraha; and punishment — its objectives, Kant’s retributivism, Bentham’s utilitarianism, the deterrent and preventive approaches, the Gandhian reformative view, and implicit bias in the justice delivery system). Below: what the unit covers, the provisions it turns on, and the cases an examiner expects you to name.