Are citizens morally obligated to obey and support 
their states? "Political Obligations and Authority," 
is perhaps A. John Simmons’ most comprehensive 
summary of his mature views on this enduring 
philosophical problem.  In this essay, Simmons 
critically engages Plato’s dialogue Crito and culls 
from it three types of strategies for justifying 
political obligations: natural duty, associative 
and transactional. Simmons argues that natural duty 
accounts are inherently incapable of providing moral 
grounding for political obligations, disqualifies both 
associative and transactional accounts on empirical 
grounds and settles for a form of anarchism.  I argue 
that, assuming as Simmons’ does in this essay that 
natural duties imply obligations of support and 
obedience to political institutions, the natural duty 
strategy promises to provide an escape route out of 
anarchism.