  Oakeshott’s idea of civil association responds to a fundamental question in political philosophy: how can the nonvoluntary character of law be reconciled with individual freedom? And his answer, which self-consciously restates conclusions reached by Rousseau, Kant, and J.S. Mill, among others, is that law respects individual freedom only when it is understood as limited to regulating the activities of citizens pursuing purposes of their own. A legal order of this kind must ensure adequate compliance with its laws, but coercion for that end should be distinguished from coercion designed to advance substantive policies unrelated to maintaining the civil order. The state as a framework of laws for the coexistence of free individuals becomes a tyranny when law is used to impose the purposes of some on others who do not share them. The legal subject in an enterprise state is not an independent citizen but someone to be led, managed, mobilized, or provided for: a subordinate assigned a role in a purposive project. The dependent role-players in an enterprise state and the independent individuals in a civil one are equally “free”, in one sense of that word, because both have “agency”, the capacity to choose even when their choices are constrained. But only in civil association do those associated enjoy “individual freedom”, which for Oakeshott means freedom from being legally subjected to the purposes of others.