Abstract

Contemporary theorists have not appreciated sufficiently that there is an interpretation of the question entitling this paper ("The Question") which adequate non-anarchist political theories must ask and to which the most plausible answer, within liberal theory, is consent. In Part I of this paper I offer an interpretation of The Question; in Part II I argue for a consent answer to it; and in Part III I indicate what such consent could consist in and reply to a recent objection to consent theory.