Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In Liberal Loyalty, Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights.Liberal Loyalty is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds.

【作者簡介】

安娜·史蒂茨（Anna Stilz） 哈佛大學政府學博士，現為普林斯頓大學政治學係和人類價值研究中心勞倫斯·S. 洛剋菲勒教授。她的研究關注包括政治隸屬，權威與政治義務，民族主義和民族自決，土地與領土的權利等問題。

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【譯者簡介】

童誌超，關注當代政治理論議題，在芝加哥大學齣版社學術刊物《美國政治思想》（American Political Thought）中有英文學術論文發錶。

顧純，南京大學英文係學士，牛津大學布拉瓦尼剋政府學院公共政策專業碩士。