 Critics maintain that in offering responses like those just described, associative theorists effectively abandon their attempt to provide a distinctive account of political obligation (Dagger 2018, p. 79–82; Wellman 2000, p. 553; Simmons 2001, pp. 83–84; 2005, pp. 111–115). That is because the moral duty to perform the (conventional) duties that constitute the role of citizen ultimately depends either on an agent’s exercise of will, i.e. consent or accepting the benefits of others’ cooperation, or a natural duty, such as the duty to support just institutions or the duty to maximize aggregate welfare. In all of these cases, citizens’ duty to obey the law ultimately depends on a consideration other than their membership in the polity. The task of morally justifying political obligation bottoms out not in the fact of association but in a moral principle external to it.