  One classical account of political authority has modeled political authority and the attendant obligations on the obligations of family and the authority of the parents. Plato gives this account of authority and obligation among others in the Crito (Plato 1948). A recent attempt to ground the legitimacy of political authority in this way is Ronald Dworkin's (Dworkin 1986). This view is meant to capture the idea that a political society can have legitimate authority even if it is not a voluntary association and even if there is disagreement on many political principles.