David asked:

Having spent the last few days banging my head against a wall, I was wondering if you could save
me a major headache by answering the following questions. Is democracy the 'least worst' form of
government. And are there limits on the duty of obedience to the state, if so how can these be
defined.

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Is democracy the 'least worst' form of government? - The question assumes that government is for
some purpose or set of purposes, and that the only dimension of assessment of different forms of
government is how well, or how badly they accomplish their objectives. However, if a political
philosopher were to put forward the argument that democracy is the only acceptable form of
government - for example, that our duty of obedience to the state can only hold if the state is ruled by
a democratically elected government - then it would not matter if democracy was the worst of all
possible arrangements for getting things done.

That is not the only principled argument for democracy. Another argument is that the fundamental
assumption of human equality is inconsistent with any form of government other than a democratic
one.

Are there limits on the duty of obedience to the state? - This is the classic question of political
philosophy. It would be impossible to attempt to answer it here. Roughly, the reasons given fall into
two main categories. Either we are morally obliged to obey the state, in which case the question is
how far this obligation extends before it is overridden by other, conflicting moral obligations. Or it is in
our own best long-term interest, all things considered, to obey the state, in which case the question is
under what circumstances one might make the well founded judgement that disobedience was in
one's best long-term interests. My own inclination is towards the first, rather than the second strategy.

On the view that our obligation to obey the state is a moral obligation, it would seem to be the case
prima facie that there can be other moral obligations which override it. When a moral claim is
overridden, that does not imply that the claim itself is invalid. However, the moral obligation to obey
the state is itself conditional on certain requirements being fulfilled. Consider the case of the Israeli
Mordechai Vanunu, who gave away his country's atomic secrets. It is possible that he simply believed
he was responding to an overriding moral imperative. An alternative explanation is that he believed
that his government, in secretly stockpiling weapons without a democratic mandate had forfeited its
moral claim on his obedience.

Geoffrey Klempner