An analysis of the intricacies of political duties and obligations in light of civil disobedience

Abstract

The general understanding of a government is that of an artificial entity, created to escape a state of nature characterised by chaos and lawlessness, and which has been given a variety of mandates towards the people it governs. This implies that at the inception of such a government, there are a set of obligations and duties that it owes to the governed, who in turn have obligations towards the government itself. The thesis argues further that because the human person intrinsically and naturally craves for freedom, its lack thereof must be compensated through the benefits of being part of a civil state. If not, then it is more desirable to go back into the state of nature. This thesis, then, is an investigation into the intricate nature of the obligations and duties that the government and the governed have towards each other in the successful functioning of a polity. The thesis argues that the formation of a government is founded on a contractarian basis, from a social contract from which the obligations of both the government and the governed are derived. Arguing from this position, for this contract to work, both parties must abide by their obligations and duties which is the thesis’ conception of justice. An observation is made that power dynamics in the social contract between the government and its citizens are tilted in favour of the government, which has the potential to flout the terms of the contract since it controls coercive force. In the event that the government fails to fulfil its obligations and duties, thereby creating a travesty on this principle of justice, the thesis argues that the governed are under the moral imperative to abjure their obligations towards the state in an act of civil disobedience. In this light, the thesis argues that civil disobedience should be enshrined in the social contract as one of the measures to even- out the imbalance of power between the government and the citizens. Together with other measures to keep the government in check, the study argues that civil disobedience is one of thebest recourses to ensure that the shortcomings of the government are identified and promptly ameliorated. Through a comprehensive textual analysis and synthesis of literature on civil disobedience and the social contract, the thesis uses the Southern African country of Zimbabwe as a case study to demonstrate the veracity of its central arguments.