 Like the other theories of political obligation, associative accounts have met with considerable criticism. One line of attack targets the parallels many of its proponents draw between the family and the polity. In Ronald Dworkin’s words, “political association, like family and friendship and other forms of association more local and intimate, is in itself pregnant of obligation” (1986, p. 206). John Horton invokes further analogs between family and polity in his argument for associative political obligation: