Some of its policy implications diverge from mainstream liberalism in particular ways, and for this reason civic republicans are sometimes also confused with communitarians see the entry on communitarianism. For the strengths or weakness of civic republicanism to be fairly assessed, both confusions should be assiduously avoided.
Absolutely central to the contemporary civic republican program is the conception of political liberty as non-domination or independence from arbitrary power, and so it makes good sense to begin with an explication of this idea.
It is notorious that there are several competing conceptions of political liberty. This idea of negative liberty Berlin associates especially with the classic English political philosophers Hobbes, Bentham, and J. Mill, and it is today probably the dominant conception of liberty, particularly among contemporary Anglo-American philosophers.
Roughly speaking, a person or group is free in the positive sense to the extent that they exercise self-control or self-mastery. It is not agreed, however, what exactly constitutes this self-mastery in the relevant sense.
For example, the addicted gambler may be free in the negative sense not to gamble—since no one actually forces him to do so—, but he is not free in the positive sense unless he actually succeeds in acting on his presumed second-order desire not to desire gambling. Berlin associates this second conception especially with such continental philosophers as Spinoza, Rousseau, and Hegel. Although it found some support among English Hegelians like T. Green, those who advocate the positive conception of liberty have generally been in the minority, particularly among contemporary Anglo-American philosophers.
The troubling implications of the positive conception of liberty are well-known, and need not be rehearsed at length here. Regarding this danger, Berlin writes:. Liberals like Berlin have thus understandably rejected the positive, and emphatically embraced the negative conception of liberty. The question remains, however, whether the received view of negative liberty as non-interference in particular adequately captures the political ideal we should be most interested in.
Contemporary civic republicans argue that it does not. By way of illustration, consider the following scenarios both are standard examples in the republican tradition.
In the first, imagine a group of slaves with a generally well-meaning master. While the latter has an institutionally-protected right to treat his slaves more or less as he pleases he might start whipping them just for the heck of it, say , let us suppose that this master in particular leaves his slaves for the most part alone. Now to the extent that he does not in fact interfere with his slaves on a day-to-day basis, we are committed to saying—on the non-interference view of liberty—that they enjoy some measure of freedom.
Some find this conclusion deeply counterintuitive: if there is anything to the idea of political liberty, one might think, surely it cannot be found in the condition of slavery! Even if we are willing to accept this conclusion, the non-interference view of liberty commits us to others that are perhaps even more paradoxical. For one thing, notice that we are committed to saying that the slaves of our well-meaning master enjoy greater freedom than the slaves of an abusive master down the road.
Of course, the former slaves are better off in some respect than the latter, but do we really want to say that they are more free? Thus, on the non-interference view of liberty, we are committed to saying that his freedom is increasing over time. Now consider a second scenario. Imagine the colony of a great imperial power. Suppose that the colonial subjects have no political rights, and thus that the imperial power governs them unilaterally. But further suppose that the imperial power, for one reason or another, chooses not to exercise the full measure of its authority—that its policy towards the colony is one of more or less benign neglect.
From the point of view of liberty as non-interference, we must conclude that the colonial subjects enjoy considerable freedom with respect to their government for, on a day-to-day basis, their government hardly ever interferes with them.
Next suppose that the colonial subjects revolt with success, and achieve political independence. The former colony is now self-governing. On the view of liberty as non-interference, we must therefore say that there has been a decline in freedom with independence. As in the first scenario, many find this counterintuitive. Surely, a nation that has secured its independence from colonial rule must have increased its political liberty.
What these examples are driving at is that political liberty might best be understood as a sort of structural relationship that exists between persons or groups, rather than as a contingent outcome. What is not contingent or at least not in the same way is the broader configuration of laws, institutions, and norms that effectively permit masters to treat their slaves however they please.
The republican conception of political liberty aims to capture this insight as directly as possible. It defines freedom as a sort of structural independence—as the condition of not being subject to the arbitrary or uncontrolled power of a master. Pettit , , , , This view has since been widely embraced by republican-minded authors such as Skinner , , , Viroli , Maynor , , Laborde , , Costa , , , Honohan , , and Taylor Notice that the republican view of freedom is, at least in the broad sense, a negative conception of political liberty.
Republican freedom merely requires the absence of something, namely, the absence of any structural dependence on arbitrary power or domination. Also like non-interference, non-domination comes in degrees: on the civic republican view, one is not either free or unfree, but rather more or less free depending on the extent of non-domination one securely enjoys.
Despite these similarities, however, republican freedom is not equivalent to the received view of negative liberty as non-interference. In contrast to the non-interference view, it easily accounts for our intuitions in the two scenarios described above. The slave lacks freedom because he is vulnerable to the arbitrary power of his master; whether his master happens to exercise that power is neither here nor there. Likewise, what matters with respect to political freedom on the republican view is not how much the imperial power chooses to govern its colony, but the fact that the former may choose to govern the latter as much and however it likes.
Moreover, the republican conception captures in a more intuitively satisfying way what would improve either situation with respect to political liberty. This is not necessarily to say that the slaves will enjoy greater well-being, all things considered—only that because their domination is lessened, they enjoy greater freedom to that extent.
And of course, no matter how benevolent their particular master happens to be, no slave can be completely free until the institution of slavery itself is abolished. Political freedom is most fully realized, on this view, in a well-ordered self-governing republic of equal citizens under the rule of law, where no one citizen is the master of any other Pettit , , , ; Skinner , ; Spitz , ; Viroli ; Maynor ; Lovett a, a.
The appeal of the republican conception of political liberty as independence from the arbitrary power of a master is perhaps understandable. This is not to say, however, that this conception is uncontroversial. Before discussing its role in developing contemporary civic republican arguments, we should consider various problems and debates surrounding the republican idea of freedom. A common objection to the republican idea of freedom is that it fails to pick out an distinct conception at all.
The suggestion here, first noted perhaps by Paley , is that talking about non-domination is really just another more obscure way of talking about security of non-interference Goodin ; Carter ; Kramer Contemporary civic republicans must reject this view.
Pettit , 73—4 observes that one might secure a low expected level of non-interference in more than one way, and the republican idea of freedom is by no means indifferent as to the method adopted. Supposing then that non-domination and non-interference are indeed distinct ideas, one might wonder where this leaves the latter, on the civic republican view of things.
Is obtaining freedom from arbitrary power the only thing we should care about? Roughly speaking, there are three possible answers civic republicans might give to this question.
The first is simply to answer yes. It was a mistake, one might argue, to ever think non-interference important or desirable in itself. There are good reasons for rejecting this first answer, however. Imagine living in a community where our lives are regulated down to the tiniest detail, but always in strict accordance with commonly-known, non-arbitrary rules and procedures.
Although we enjoy extensive freedom from arbitrary power, we have hardly any freedom of individual choice. Most would not want to live in such a community, and this suggests that we do indeed place some independent value on non-interference Larmore ; Wall This leaves two other possible answers. On the one hand, we might try to incorporate some measure of non-interference into our idea of freedom as non-domination. Perhaps my republican freedom is compromised when someone gains arbitrary power over me, but it is merely conditioned when I lack the means or opportunities to make full use of it, and interferences might be one such conditioning factor.
On the other hand, we might allow that republican freedom and non-interference are distinct goods, but hold that both are valuable in some degree. We might either regard them as having roughly equal value Skinner , or we might regard republican liberty as having greater importance than non-interference, other things equal Viroli , Pettit Each of these options has its advantages and disadvantages, and there is no settled view in the contemporary civic republican literature on this point see Lovett A second major difficulty in developing the republican idea of freedom lies in giving precise meaning to the notion of arbitrariness.
Not simply when its exercise is random or unpredictable. This view would undermine the whole point of the republican conception of political liberty. Discretionary power might be delegated to a public agency with a view to advancing certain policy goals or ends—as for example Congress has delegated discretionary authority to the Federal Reserve—but we would not want to say that this reduces our freedom or, at any rate, not so long as that discretionary authority is appropriately answerable to a common knowledge understanding of the goals or ends it is meant to serve and the means it is permitted to employ.
For reasons explained in the fourth section of this entry, contemporary civic republicans must be able to offer an account of non-arbitrary, yet discretionary authority. How then should we characterize arbitrary power? Broadly speaking, two answers have been proposed.
The first defines non-arbitrariness procedurally. Power is not arbitrary, on this view, to the extent that it is reliably controlled by effective rules, procedures, or goals that are common knowledge to all persons or groups concerned Lovett , To be reliable and effective, on this view, constraints must be resilient over a wide range of possible changes or modifications in the relevant circumstances Lovett c.
Roughly speaking, the procedural view equates republican freedom with the traditional idea of the rule of law, provided we are willing to extend the latter idea considerably List ; Lovett a. Alternatively, we might define non-arbitrariness democratically.
Power is not arbitrary, on this second view, to the extent that it is directly or indirectly controlled by the concerned persons or groups themselves. In an example offered by Pettit , 57—58 , suppose Andrea has given Bob the keys to her alcohol cupboard, with strict instructions that no matter how much she pleads, he is not to return them except on twenty-four hours notice. Since Bob must answer to Andrea for his conduct in this regard, his power over her is not arbitrary.
In roughly the same way, the power of the state over its citizens will not be arbitrary provided the people have an equal share in controlling how their state exercises its power. Many authors subscribe to some version of this democratic view see for example Bohman ; Laborde ; Forst ; McCammon Either way, two caveats are worth noting. The first is that, on either view, arbitrariness simply means uncontrolled and vice versa.
The second caveat is that, again on either view, arbitrary or uncontrolled power should not be defined along substantive lines as power that is unjust or illegitimate. The well-known problem with a moralized definition of arbitrariness is that it would collapse our conception of republican freedom into a general account of the human good Larmore ; Costa ; Carter So far we have assumed that, however ultimately defined, republican freedom is always a good thing.
Some have wondered whether this is the case, however. This objection is most often expressed via the example of benevolent care-giving relationships.
On the republican view that one enjoys freedom only to the extent that one is independent from arbitrary power, it would seem that children do not enjoy republican freedom with respect to their parents.
But surely, one might suppose, the parent-child relationship is in most cases an extremely valuable one, and so we would not want greater republican freedom in such a context. Republican freedom is, perhaps, not always a good thing Ferejohn As stated, this objection rests on a conceptual error, though as we shall see it points to an important set of issues as yet under-developed in the contemporary civic republican literature. The error in the above example stems from our confusing the overall evaluation of a whole with an evaluation of its parts considered separately.
It is undeniable that, at least in the ordinary course of things, parent-child relationships are extremely valuable, considered as a whole; it does not follow from this, however, that the relationship is necessarily valuable in each and every part.
For the objection to hold, it must be the case—not only that the parent-child relationship is valuable overall—but further, that that it would actually be worse if, holding all its other features constant, it involved less arbitrary power. But this is highly doubtful. That their republican freedom cannot be increased still further, perhaps, without destroying family life altogether, and thus losing its many other benefits, is neither here nor there. What consideration of this faulty objection does reveal, however, is that republican freedom is simply one good among others, with which it might come into conflict Markell Pettit , sketches a case for the relative priority of republican liberty on more or less pragmatic grounds: roughly speaking, he argues that political doctrines will be most effective when they concentrate on as few core values as possible, and accordingly that the best values to concentrate on are those whose promotion will service as wide a range of needs as possible.
Republican freedom is just such a good, he claims, insofar as our efforts to promote it will necessarily have far-reaching beneficial consequences. It will be more clear why this might be so in light of the discussion in part four below, but regardless there remains considerable work to be done developing the foundations of republican theory. After long-standing neglect among historians of political thought, there has been a dramatic revival of interest in the classical republican tradition in the past fifty years or so.
For the first few decades of this revival, a particular interpretation of that tradition prevailed. According to this view, the classical republicans held what would now be described as a perfectionist political philosophy—that is, a political philosophy centered on the idea of promoting a specific conception of the good life as consisting in active citizenship and healthy civic virtue on the one hand, while combating any sort of corruption that would undermine these values on the other.
This distinctive vision of the good life is supposed to be rooted in the experience of the ancient Greek polis, especially as expressed in the writings of Aristotle. The goods of active political participation, civic virtue, and so on, are to be understood as intrinsically valuable components of human flourishing. These and other civic humanist writings have left such an impression on the field that even today many fail to distinguish their views from those of the civic republicans. As we shall see, however, the two are importantly distinct.
Beginning with Skinner , Sunstein , and Pettit , an alternative interpretation of the tradition began to emerge. Undoubtedly, the classical republicans were committed to the importance of active political participation, civic virtue, combating corruption, and so forth. But rather than viewing these as intrinsically valuable components of a particular vision of the good life, these authors argued, they should instead be viewed as instrumentally useful tools for securing and preserving political liberty, understood as independence from arbitrary rule.
Republicanism, on this view, has its roots not in an Aristotelian vision of the ancient Greek polis, but rather in Roman jurisprudence with its fundamental and categorical distinction between free men and citizens on the one hand, and dependent slaves on the other.
There now exists a considerable historiographical literature advancing this new interpretation, including studies of Machiavelli Skinner , ; Viroli , the seventeenth-century English republicans Dzelzainis ; Skinner , ; Lovett , a ; Rousseau Viroli ; the Americans of the founding era Sellers ; Wollstonecraft Coffee ; Halldenius ; and the nineteenth-century American labor republicans Gourevitch These and other contemporary civic republicans argue that a careful reading of the classical republican texts firmly rejects the perfectionist interpretation favored by civic humanists.
Moreover, the instrumental turn was vital to establishing interest in republicanism as a viable contemporary political doctrine. The difficulty with civic humanism, as many critics have pointed out, is that a perfectionist vision of human flourishing through active political virtue is out of step with modern political and social conditions.
There is simply no hope of recreating the experience of the Greek polis in economically complex mass democracies characterized by reasonable pluralism Herzog ; Goodin ; Brennan and Lomasky This objection is removed, however, if we regard civic virtue instrumentally, as merely one tool among others for securing political liberty. Insofar as republicans are willing to use that tool, and thus willing to support public policies designed to deliberately cultivate civic virtue, they must perhaps reject stronger doctrines of liberal neutrality; but they will nevertheless be happy to endorse broad principles of toleration Honohan ; Lovett and Whitfield At one level, this should surprise no one.
After all, classical republicans and classical liberals shared many political commitments constitutionalism and the rule of law, for example , and many figures are regarded as central to both traditions Montesquieu, for example. The difficulty arises, however, from the suggestion that on the new instrumental interpretation, republicanism for all intents and purposes collapses into liberalism Larmore ; Patten What then is the advantage of civic republicanism over mainstream liberalism Herzog ; Goodin ; Brennan and Lomasky ?
The republican critique of liberalism is thus best understood as a critique of various problematic tendencies that developed within the liberal tradition as it increasingly diverged from its republican roots.
The most important of these is the tendency in the liberal tradition, especially beginning with Bentham, Paley, and Constant, to displace the robust conception of liberty as independence from arbitrary or uncontrolled power with a weaker conception of liberty as non-interference. The significance of this substitution will be easier to assess after the discussion below, but in the main it comes down to this: because republican liberty is inherently incompatible with any form of dependency or mastery, its social implications are considerably more radical than those of mere negative liberty.
Pettit What is more, on the view of liberty as non-interference, any sort of public law or policy intervention will count as an interference and, ergo, as a reduction in freedom. Liberals committed to the received view of negative liberty will thus tend to be overly hostile to government action Pettit , On the republican view, by contrast, public laws or policy interventions need not always count as reductions in freedom. Indeed, if the law or policy ameliorates dependency, or curtails the arbitrary powers some in the community exercise over others, freedom may be enhanced.
The grounds for this claim will be explained further below. However interesting the debates discussed in the previous section, one may still wonder whether republicanism has anything valuable to contribute to contemporary normative political theory and philosophy.
One reason many people remain skeptical has to do with the fact that the classical republican writings often express views that are decidedly elitist, patriarchal, and militaristic. How could the basis for an appealing contemporary political program be found in such writings Goldsmith ; Maddox ; Goodin ; McCormick ? That the classical republicans often expressed these very unappealing views is not disputed. But what are we to make of this fact? There are two possibilities.
On the one hand, the parochialism of the classical republicans might reflect logical consequences of their core value commitments, in which case we cannot adopt the latter without taking on board the former. On the other hand, it might merely reflect the accidental prejudices of their day, in which case it can easily be dispensed with as we modernize the republican program.
Now according to the civic humanist reading of the tradition, the classical republicans were committed to a perfectionist conception of the human good as active citizenship and civic virtue. On this view, it is clear that some individuals will be more successful than others in attaining the good so understood—some are more adept at politics than others, some are more capable of heroic displays of virtue than others, and so on.
Indeed, political power and public honor are, to some extent, positional goods, meaning that their distribution among the members of a community will necessarily be unequal. It follows that, on the civic humanist reading of the tradition, the elitist bent of the classical republican writings is a consequence of their core values.
The civic republicans, naturally, reject this view. There is nothing inherently elitist about the ideal of freedom when this is understood negatively as independence from arbitrary or uncontrolled power. The classical republicans, to be sure, typically confined the extension of this ideal to a narrow range of propertied, native-born male citizens.
But on the civic republican reading of the tradition, this merely reflects an unnecessary prejudice we can easily dispense with. The elitism of the tradition long concealed the potentially radical implications of freedom as non-domination; suitably universalized now at last, republicanism is revealed to be a strikingly progressive political doctrine Pettit , ; Maynor ; Lovett ; Gourevitch The remainder of this section will sketch some of the wide-ranging applications of a universalized republicanism, dedicated to the promotion of freedom as non-domination.
Much of the contemporary republican program, as one would expect, bares some familial relationship with the political commitments of the classical republicans. There are also divergences, however. Contemporary civic republicans draw inspiration from the classical tradition, but they do not aim to anachronistically implement the republicanism of yore for its own sake. Contemporary civic republicans aim to promote freedom, understood as independence from arbitrary power.
Roughly speaking, there are two directions from which republican freedom might be threatened. First, there is the obvious danger of an autocratic or despotic government assuming arbitrary powers over its subjects; this concern, and republican remedies for it, will be discussed below.
But there is a second danger to republican freedom as well—one that concerns contemporary civic republicans just as much as the first. This is the danger that some individuals or groups within civil society will succeed in assuming arbitrary or uncontrolled powers over others. A few examples will help clarify this second danger. Imagine for a moment there were no system of domestic criminal and civil law.
In this case, citizens would not know where they stood with one another; their interrelations would be governed simply by force—which is to say, by the arbitrary whim of the momentarily stronger party. Notice that, on the republican view of freedom, the laws do not merely protect some freedoms at the expense of others as on the non-interference view , but rather themselves actually introduce or enable that freedom.
On this view, only when their interrelations are mutually governed by a system of public and stable rules is it possible for fellow citizens to enjoy some measure of independence from arbitrary rule Pettit , , ; Viroli ; Dagger This connection between the rule of law and freedom is a common theme in the classical republican literature.
Contemporary civic republicans observe, however, that even when the rule of law is firmly established, there remain many other potential dangers of which the classical republicans were less well aware. Specifically, there is the danger of basic needs deprivation, which can place the least advantaged members of society in a position of economic vulnerability Spitz ; Pettit ; Viroli In order to satisfy their basic needs, individuals may well submit themselves to the arbitrary power of exploitative employers or become dependent on the whims of voluntary charity Dagger ; Lovett ; Gourevitch Press ESC to cancel.
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