Abstract

This article develops a critique of the associativist claim that membership of a polity grounds political obligations. It does so by examining the role that membership plays in the conceptions of practical judgment that associative theories of political obligation presuppose. I distinguish two strands of associativist theorizing (“adjudicative” and “interpretive”) and challenge an assumption they both share: treating membership as a matter of social fact, given to practical judgment. Neither approach accounts adequately for interpersonal and temporal differences of perspective. I propose instead that judgment partakes in the constitution, breakdown, and transformation of political relationships. The fact of membership is part of the problem, not the solution to the problem of political obligation. Political membership, from a practical point of view, remains an inherently open question. This calls for a pragmatist mode of theorizing political obligation. I read Shelby’s work on the ethics of membership in today’s deeply unequal and racialized United States as an exemplar of a more engaged mode of judging and theorizing political obligations.