Rules and Obligations

Abstract

The existence of the obligation to follow rules in sport is widely accepted, but there are only a few studies that provide accounts that justify it. Building upon Wolff's challenge to traditional political theories, this study proposes a theory that limits the level of normativity to which participants in sport contests are bound in an effort to maximize their autonomy. Instead of constructing a unitary theory of obligations to follow sport rules, a pluralistic account is offered, one that allows for multiple sources of normativity, thus augmenting the freedom of communities to play games according to their values.

Keywords:

• normativity
• autonomy
• pluralism
• contractualism

Notes

1. Like, for example, in Rule 2.00 in the Official Baseball Rules, which establishes the meaning of certain terms used (Major League Baseball 2010).

2. In fact, McPherson denies that there is a moral obligation to follow the laws, a sign that conceptual arguments have a hard time explaining the moral nature of the obligations they are trying to introduce.

3. According to Brandt (1964), obligations are voluntarily undertaken, while duties are not necessarily so.

4. Even in the case of doping, which presents a challenge to this kind of project, perfect enforcement would be possible at the expense of the civil rights of the participants.

5. For a review of various definitions of cheating, see Fraleigh (2003, 168–9). The meaning of cheating in this paper is borrowed from Fraleigh (2003): ‘Cheating is an intentional act that violates an appropriate interpretation of the rules shared by the participants, done to gain advantage for oneself and/or one’s teammates, while trying to avoid detection so as to escape penalty’ (168).

6. It is important to point out that this characteristic does not exist in the case of games like the one described in the previous section. In this example, since enforcement is near perfect, free ridership is eliminated.

7. ‘Entanglement’ here refers not just to the dependence of one's benefits on the compliance of others to rules, but at the same time to the mutuality of this relationship.

8. The fact that the chance of obtaining a benefit is a benefit in itself is clear in lotteries. When one buys a lottery ticket, she purchases the chance of winning a prize. If this chance were not a good in itself, then she would be entitled to a refund in case she did not get the prize.

9. It might be argued that while participants in these games start as isolated individuals, unlikely to be considered members of a fraternal community, as the game progresses they are likely to establish bonds built upon the common effort of playing the game, which would make Dworkin's account relevant even in the case of purely professional games. Horton's criticism of the claim that adversarial contexts like sport function as collective endeavors seems to indicate the limitations of any fraternal bonds that might be established. Furthermore, even if these bonds appear, they might play a secondary role in the motivational system of the participants, compared to the interest in financial benefits. This being said, the possibility of a modification of the motivations that drive participant to play the game cannot be discounted. As the motivation changes, so will the relationships at the basis of the game and, consequently, the source of normativity. This, in itself, is not a problem for the pluralistic account.

10. It might be argued that by allowing communities to select the source of normativity in their games, the pluralist view is vulnerable to the same kinds of criticism directed at conventionalism by Simon (2000) and Dixon (2003). Three weaknesses are particularly important. First, conventionalism is associated with relativism, with the idea that assent of a community is sufficient justification for normativity. However, the pluralist model presented here only allows for communities to select sources that are morally normative (e.g., responsibility to keep promises by contractarians, fraternity and care by Dworkin, fairness by Rawls), so the community does not create normativity, but rather only selects from already existing source of normativity one that applies to its games. Second, conventionalism is criticized for legitimizing immoral practices that are accepted by a community. As it was mentioned above, these sources are regarded as already having morally normative power prior to them being chosen by communities, so this counterargument fails. Finally, critics of conventionalism point out that assent is not a source of normativity, but this issue does not affect the pluralist account presented here because the normativity of these sources is not dependent on the assent of the community, but rather it is built on moral duties (e.g., responsibility to keep promises by contractarians, fraternity and care by Dworkin, fairness by Rawls), independent of any kind of choice.

11. The existence of the first characteristic should not be interpreted as a requirement that the agreements be actual existing contracts. Even if a participant does not communicate with others or she is not actively engaged in the process of organizing the game, her refusal to engage in dialogue with the other participants or to participate at the set up of the game can be considered as a form of tacit acceptance of the rules established by the other participants.

12. In fact, the federation-athlete relationship is even more one-sided than that between employer-employee, because in the case of the latter, some level of negotiation still exists.

13. Again, this agreement is likely to be tacit, and begins from the moment the individual becomes affiliated with the federation.