Legitimate political authority rests on an exchange of protection for obedience.

Evidence

There are two different schemas. The first seems to correspond to the state that we call “normal,” that of a protective or security-based sovereignty—what might be called the protectorate. In this case, political authority is structured by what Hobbes calls “the mutual relation between protection and obedience.” The sovereign protects me, and it is because he protects me that he has the right to force me to obey him. Schmitt condensed this into the formula “Protego ergo obligo”: I protect, so I am obliged. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 558

Categorization

• XREF: The protectorate/protection-obedience exchange links directly to the reader’s goal of understanding enlisting citizenry to accept the moral obligation to kill. — connects to: The protective state’s hidden principle is obedience owed even when protection fails; State power depends materially on the bodies citizens lend it.; War reverses the protection-obedience relation so subjects protect the sovereign. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 559 (+8 more)

Related

• The protective state’s hidden principle is obedience owed even when protection fails (similarity 0.91)
• War reverses the protection-obedience relation so subjects protect the sovereign. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Compelled compliance under a threat of unpleasant consequences is being obliged. #complicates (0.75) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 141
• In each political community, he thought, one will find a sovereign—a person or a determinate group whom the rest obey habitually, but who is not in the habit of obeying anyone else. The legal… #qualifies (0.65)
• Legal obligation differs from mere coercion by threat of force #corroborates (0.60) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 40
• Normative obligation differs fundamentally from being threatened into compliance. #corroborates (0.60) — Ronald M. Dworkin, The Model of Rules, 47
• State power depends on borrowing the bodies of its subjects #expands (0.55) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 695