What could get in the way of building support for making sovereign obligation central to a modern notion of legitimacy? One possible obstacle is that some governments might disagree with a specific objective either as a matter of principle or in certain contexts. A second potential obstacle is that a government might agree in principle but for one reason or another be unable to act. It could lack resources or domestic law or sufficient domestic political support. A third reason would be that it is deemed unacceptable to make the trade-off described in the paragraph just above, namely, that any
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