ABSTRACT
Defence of a reform version of consent theory assumes that existing liberal democratic governments may lack political authority. This assumption some writers regard as repugnant to common sense. For example Hanna Pitkin in her ‘Obligation and Consent, I’ (1965), wrote that:
… consent theory is much troubled by the difficulty of showing that you, or a majority of your fellow-citizens … have in fact consented … Of course, these facts need not invalidate the consent argument. Perhaps most of us are not really obligated in modern, apathetic mass society; perhaps our government is not really legitimate. But such conclusions seem to fly in the face of commonsense. Surely, one feels, if the present government of the United States is not a legitimate authority, no government has ever been (1965, p. 994).
