Who Gets to Tell You What to Do? The Puzzle of Political Authority

Imagine this: you’re walking home from school, and a police officer stops you. She tells you that there’s a new law—everyone under eighteen has to be home by 5 p.m. You didn’t vote for this law. You never agreed to it. Nobody asked you. But if you ignore it, you could get in trouble.

Should you obey?

Not just because you might get caught. The question is deeper: does this person—or the government she works for—actually have the right to tell you what to do? And if so, where does that right come from?

This is the central puzzle of political authority. Philosophers have been fighting about it for hundreds of years, and they still haven’t agreed.

What Does “Authority” Even Mean?

When we say someone has authority, we usually mean two different things. A doctor has theoretical authority: if she tells you that you have strep throat, you have a reason to believe her. She knows more than you about that.

But governments claim practical authority: they say you have a reason to do what they tell you to do, just because they told you. Not because the thing they’re telling you to do is obviously right or good. The reason comes from who says it, not what they say.

This is weird when you think about it. If your friend tells you to do something stupid, you’d say “why should I?” But governments claim that “because I said so” actually works—at least for them.

Philosophers break this down a few different ways. Some say authority means the government is justified in making and enforcing laws (even if nobody has a duty to obey). Others say authority means the government has the power to create duties for you—like a promise does, but without you agreeing. And some say authority means the government has a right to rule, which means you owe it obedience, and it can demand that from you.

The strongest version—the one that really matters—is the claim that authorities create duties. When a legitimate government says “do this,” you have a moral reason to do it, not just a “I’ll get in trouble” reason.

The Anarchist’s Challenge

Robert Paul Wolff, a philosopher who thought hard about this, argued that political authority can never be legitimate. Here’s why: being a morally responsible person means you should always decide for yourself what’s right and wrong. You shouldn’t just hand over your judgment to someone else. But obeying an authority means exactly that—doing what they say because they said it, not because you’ve decided it’s the right thing.

Wolff called this the conflict between authority and autonomy. Autonomy means governing yourself, thinking for yourself. Authority means letting someone else govern you. And Wolff thought these can’t both exist at the same time.

So either we’re all autonomous (no one has authority over anyone), or we’re all subjects (no one thinks for themselves). Wolff chose autonomy. He became what philosophers call a philosophical anarchist: someone who thinks no government actually has legitimate authority, even if some governments are better than others.

Most philosophers think Wolff went too far. But his challenge is the starting point for every theory of authority. You have to explain how obeying someone else could ever be compatible with being a thinking, responsible person.

One popular answer is consent. Governments get authority when the people they govern agree to be governed. This sounds nice and democratic. The idea goes back to John Locke, an English philosopher writing in the 1600s. Locke argued that all people are born free and equal. Nobody is naturally the boss of anyone else. So the only way someone can get authority over you is if you give it to them—on purpose, voluntarily.

Think of it like a promise. If you promise your friend you’ll help them move, you now have a duty to show up. You created that duty yourself, by promising. Consent to government works the same way, Locke thought. When you agree to be governed, you create a duty to obey.

There’s an obvious problem: almost nobody has actually consented. You probably never signed a paper saying “I agree to be governed by my country’s laws.” So Locke came up with the idea of tacit consent—consent that’s implied by your actions, not stated out loud. Maybe just living in a country counts as agreeing to its rules.

But David Hume, another philosopher, pointed out a problem with this. Most people can’t easily move to another country. If you’ve lived somewhere your whole life, and leaving would mean leaving your family, your friends, your school, and everything you know, can we really say that staying counts as agreement? Hume compared it to someone who’s been carried onto a ship against their will, and now the captain says “by staying on this ship, you’ve agreed to obey me.” But the only alternative is jumping into a stormy sea. That’s not real choice.

The consent theorist might say: okay, but you still know that staying implies agreement. Everyone else expects you to follow the rules. That’s just how it works.

But then another philosopher, Lea Brilmayer, raised a different objection. Imagine someone walks into a board meeting—not the chairperson, not anyone with authority, just some random person—and says “I’m going to propose something, and if nobody objects, I’ll take that as your consent.” Would that work? Of course not. The person doesn’t have the standing to make that proposal. So for tacit consent to work, there already has to be an authority in place to receive the consent. But that’s exactly what we’re trying to justify. It seems like the argument goes in circles.

This doesn’t mean consent theory is dead. Some philosophers still defend it. But it has a hard time explaining how real governments get authority over real people, since almost nobody has actually, genuinely agreed.

Functionalist Theory: It’s About What Works

Consent theory respects individuals—it says nobody can boss you around without your OK. But it has a downside. What if someone refuses to consent to a perfectly good government, just because they want to freeload? Should one person’s refusal really destroy the authority of a just system?

Functionalist theories say no. They argue that authority is justified when it’s necessary to achieve certain morally urgent goals. These goals might include keeping peace, establishing justice, or protecting people from each other.

Thomas Hobbes, writing during the English Civil War, argued that without government, life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” People would be in constant fear of each other. Government—any government—is better than that. So as long as a government keeps basic peace and order, it has authority.

More modern functionalists add conditions: the government has to be minimally just, not just any government. But the core idea is the same: authority comes from doing a necessary job, not from getting everyone’s permission.

A.J. Simmons objects with what he calls the “Boundary Problem.” Imagine one country invades another and takes over its territory. Then the invading country starts providing peace and justice to the people. On functionalist grounds, it seems like the invaders now have authority. But that feels wrong. Something seems missing. For Simmons, what’s missing is the consent of the people being ruled.

Another objection is the “Particularity Problem.” Suppose you have a duty to support just institutions. Fine. But why this particular institution? Why obey this government rather than sending your tax money to some other worthy cause? The state is just one among many just institutions. If you have a duty to support justice, you could fulfill it by donating to Oxfam or volunteering at a food bank. You don’t have to obey your local government specifically.

Functionalists respond that the state isn’t just supporting justice—it’s establishing it. The state creates the rules of property, contract, and criminal law. Without those rules, there’s no framework for justice at all. So if you want to treat others justly, you need to follow the rules of the state that defines what just treatment means in your society.

But this is still controversial. Simmons thinks people have the right to organize their lives around other values, like independence or small communities. It’s not obviously unreasonable to prefer being a hermit to being part of a state.

The Principle of Fairness

Christopher Wellman offers a version of functionalism that tries to solve the “why me?” problem. He argues that if you benefit from a cooperative scheme that provides something crucial (like basic security), you have a duty of fairness to do your part.

But there’s a problem: does your individual obedience actually make a difference? If you break one law, the whole system doesn’t collapse. Your single act of law-breaking probably has zero effect on whether the government can keep the peace. So why should you bother?

Wellman says: it’s not about individual effects. It’s about fairness. If everyone else is following the rules to keep society running, you’d be freeloading if you didn’t do your share. Even if your contribution doesn’t matter individually, it’s unfair to take the benefits without bearing the burdens.

Robert Nozick gave a famous objection to this. Imagine your neighbors set up a public entertainment system—speakers in the street playing music all day. Everyone benefits from the music. But does that mean you’re obligated to take a turn running the speakers? Most people would say no. You didn’t ask for the music, and you shouldn’t be forced to participate just because your neighbors decided to create this system.

Wellman and his allies respond that basic security is different from entertainment. It’s not just any cooperative scheme—it’s one that provides something indispensable. You can’t opt out of needing security, so you can’t opt out of the duty to support it.

Instrumentalism: Authority as a Service

Joseph Raz has a different approach. He starts from the anarchist’s challenge: how can it ever be rational to obey someone else’s commands instead of thinking for yourself?

Raz’s answer is surprisingly simple. Sometimes, you’re not very good at figuring out what to do. You might be biased, or lack information, or just make bad decisions. If following someone else’s instructions would actually lead you to do what you should do (but fail to do on your own), then it makes sense to follow them.

Raz calls this the “Normal Justification Thesis.” An authority is legitimate when you’re likely to do better by following its directives than by trying to figure things out yourself. Think of it like using a GPS. You might not know the best route, but the GPS does. By following its instructions, you get where you want to go. You’ve handed over some decision-making, but for a good reason: it works.

This seems promising for some cases. You probably should follow your doctor’s medical advice. You probably should follow your teacher’s instructions about how to solve a math problem. But does it work for government?

Governments coordinate large groups of people. They solve problems that individuals can’t solve alone—like traffic, pollution, and public health. If everyone drives on whichever side of the road they prefer, nobody gets anywhere. But if the government says “drive on the right,” and everyone follows, everyone benefits. In these cases, you do better by following the rule than by deciding for yourself.

But there’s a disturbing implication. Imagine George, who opposes the Nazis. The Nazis ask him to run a chemical weapons factory. George thinks this is terrible—but he also knows that if he refuses, someone more competent and enthusiastic will take the job. By following the Nazis’ orders, George can slow down weapons production and minimize harm. On Raz’s theory, it seems like the Nazis have authority over George. Most people find that deeply wrong.

Raz might respond that there are different kinds of authority, and the Nazis have a kind of authority over George—but not the right kind. Other philosophers say this shows the theory needs additional conditions: the authority must also be minimally just, or must respect the subject’s moral standing.

Democracy: Equal Voices

Another approach says authority comes from democracy. When people disagree about how to organize society—and they always do—you need a fair way to make decisions. Each person gets an equal say. That’s democracy.

The democratic theory of authority says: when a decision is made through a fair democratic process, everyone has a duty to go along with it, even if they disagree. Why? Because refusing would be treating your fellow citizens as less than equal. You’d be saying “my opinion matters more than yours.” But democracy is built on the idea that everyone’s voice counts equally.

This connects the duty to obey to something deeper: respect for other people. If I refuse to follow a democratically-made law, I’m not just breaking a rule. I’m saying that my judgment should override everyone else’s. I’m acting as if I’m the only one who matters.

But democratic theory has to answer a hard question: what if the democratic decision is unjust? What if the majority votes to take away rights from a minority? Most democratic theorists say that democracy has limits. A decision that violates basic equality isn’t legitimate, even if it was made democratically. The same principles that give democracy its authority—equal respect—also set boundaries on what it can do.

This sounds good in theory, but it’s hard to specify exactly where the line is. And different philosophers draw it in different places.

Still a Puzzle

After hundreds of years of argument, philosophers still haven’t settled who has the right to tell you what to do. The consent theorist says it’s up to you—you must agree. The functionalist says it’s about what works—authority is justified when it does a necessary job. The instrumentalist says it’s about results—follow when it helps you do better. The democrat says it’s about fairness—everyone gets an equal voice.

Each theory captures something real. Each also has problems. Maybe no single theory fully explains how governments could have genuine authority over free, equal, thinking people. Maybe the anarchist was right.

Or maybe authority is more like a relationship than a property. Maybe it depends on trust, on shared values, on the messy fact that we live together and have to figure things out as we go.

Either way, the question matters. Because every time a police officer tells you to stop, a teacher tells you to sit down, or a law tells you what you can’t do—you’re being asked to recognize someone else’s authority. And it’s worth asking: why should you?

Appendix: Key Terms

Term	What it does in the debate
Authority	The claimed right to tell people what to do and have them obey just because you said so
Legitimate authority	Authority that actually has the moral right to be obeyed (as opposed to just being powerful enough to enforce orders)
Consent	Voluntarily agreeing to be governed; for some philosophers, the only way authority can be justified
Tacit consent	Consent that’s implied by your actions (like living in a country) rather than stated out loud
Philosophical anarchism	The view that no government has legitimate authority, even if some are better than others
Autonomy	The ability to think for yourself and make your own moral decisions
Duty to obey	The moral obligation to follow a government’s directives, just because the government issued them
Content-independent reason	A reason to do something that comes from who told you, not what they told you
Preemptive reason	A reason that pushes aside other reasons rather than just outweighing them; it tells you not to even consider certain other factors
Functionalist theory	The view that authority is justified when it’s necessary to achieve morally important goals
Normal Justification Thesis	Raz’s idea that authority is legitimate when you do better by following than by deciding for yourself
Fairness principle	The idea that if you benefit from a cooperative scheme, you have a duty to do your fair share

Appendix: Key People

John Locke (1632–1704) : English philosopher who argued that all people are naturally free and equal, so government can only get authority through consent.
David Hume (1711–1776) : Scottish philosopher who criticized Locke’s idea of tacit consent, arguing that staying in a country because you can’t afford to leave isn’t real agreement.
Robert Paul Wolff (1933–) : American philosopher who argued that authority and autonomy are fundamentally incompatible, making legitimate authority impossible.
Joseph Raz (1939–2022) : Israeli-British philosopher who developed the “service conception” of authority—authority is legitimate when it helps you do what you should do anyway.
A. John Simmons (1950–) : American philosopher who defends a Lockean consent theory and argues that most governments aren’t legitimate because they haven’t gotten genuine consent.
Christopher Wellman (1964–) : American philosopher who defends a functionalist view combining the necessity of government with the principle of fairness.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) : English philosopher who argued that without government, life would be terrible, so any government that keeps basic peace has authority.

Appendix: Things to Think About

Does it matter how a government came to power? If a dictator takes over but runs things perfectly, does she have authority? Or does the way she got power matter morally?
What would happen if everyone really did think for themselves about every law—if you decided for yourself whether to stop at red lights, pay taxes, or follow health guidelines? Would that be better or worse than just obeying?
If you’re part of a group project at school, and the group votes on how to do it, do you have a duty to go along with the majority even if you disagree? Is this like obeying government, or different?
Some philosophers think that children aren’t fully autonomous, so parents have authority over them in a way that governments don’t over adults. Does that make sense? At what age should authority over you change?

Appendix: Where This Shows Up

Arguments about civil disobedience: When people break laws they think are unjust (like civil rights protesters or climate activists), they’re making claims about what authority is actually legitimate.
Debates about political legitimacy: Some people say a government that doesn’t have the support of its people is illegitimate, even if it’s effective. Others say effectiveness is what matters.
Questions about global governance: When the UN or international courts claim authority over countries or individuals, it raises all the same puzzles about consent, function, and democracy.
Everyday arguments about rules: Every time someone says “because I said so” and you wonder why that should matter, you’re thinking about the same problem philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries.