## 1. Domination: The Basic Idea



There is, of course, considerable disagreement about what
domination really is. Even so, theorists of domination tend to agree
about this much: domination is a kind of unconstrained, unjust
imbalance of power that enables agents or systems to control other
agents or the conditions of their actions. We can call this "the
basic idea" of domination. The basic idea has the following
components:


1. Domination is a kind of power, and usually *social*
power--that is, power over other people.
2. Domination involves imbalances or asymmetries in power. The
English *domination* comes from the Latin *dominus*. A
*dominus* is a master, and mastery represents an extreme of
social power. Masters usually have all but complete control over how
their slaves will act or over the conditions in which they act. As a
result, the master/slave relation is often treated as the most obvious
case of domination.
3. Domination has many forms. Traditional Roman republicanism
recognized a distinction between *imperium* and
*dominium*--domination by the state contrasted with
domination by private parties (Pettit 1997; 31; 2001: 152ff). The
power a master has over a slave may be the clearest case of
domination, but it is not necessary to have a literal *dominus*
in order to be dominated. For example, tyrants over their subjects and
men over women in patriarchal societies are also common examples of
domination. Combined with the master/slave, these examples are so
common in the literature that we can refer to them together simply as
the *Paradigms*. Failure to explain why the Paradigms count as
domination is sometimes considered reason enough to reject a theory of
domination (see Lovett 2010, Blunt 2015, and McCammon 2015). Other
examples may not manifest the extremes of power we see in the
Paradigms; but it is generally agreed that domination comes in
degrees, and that someone may be dominated even if nobody has total
power over them.
4. Dominating power is in some sense *unconstrained*. It is
up to masters how they will or will not use their power. Such power is
often described as *arbitrary* or *discretionary*; or,
perhaps, unlimited by the interests of those under its sway; or,
perhaps, projects only the vision of the world most favorable to the
empowered while preventing the subjugated from seeing themselves or
the world on their own terms. However it is characterized, that claim
that domination counts as such because of the absence of some limit
recurs in many theories.
5. Domination is an unjust or morally illegitimate form of social
power. Whatever domination turns out to be, it is morally serious. It
is a complaint (Pettit 2005). To be dominated is typically to have
cause for indignation and resentment against the dominator or against
institutions that dominate or make domination possible.



Much contemporary disagreement about domination involves competing
answers to three questions: (1) Who, or what, can dominate? (2) Is it
possible to dominate merely by *having* power with a certain
structure, or is domination an *exercise* or an *abuse*
of power? (3) Exercised or unexercised, what kind of power is
domination? The remainder of this entry will address each of these
questions in turn, then conclude with a survey of how the idea of
domination has been used in recent applied ethical theory. It will
become clear as we examine competing answers to these three questions
that different theorists have very different ideas of why, exactly, we
need a theory of domination. There may be wide agreement that we need
the idea of domination to make sense of unjust power relations, but
unjust power relations are wildly varied, and theorists of domination
disagree not only about which varieties most need to be understood,
but about how theorizing domination helps us to understand them. 



Another word of qualification before proceeding: what follows is a
survey of work almost entirely from Anglophone political philosophers
and political theorists, broadly within the Analytic tradition. For
theories of domination from the Continental tradition, see the entry,
 feminist perspectives on power.


## 2. Who, or What, Can Dominate?


### 2.1 Domination by Agents, Group Agents, and Groups



The neorepublican tradition (i.e., the tradition of thinking about
domination associated primarily with the historical scholarship of
Quentin Skinner and the political theory of Philip Pettit) tends to
present domination as a relation between agents; only agents can
dominate or be dominated (Pettit 1997: 52), though the agent/agents
might be a group or collective. Domination by groups may not require
that they do so as a *group agent* (List & Pettit 2011:
19-41). The metaphysics of group agency usually require shared
beliefs or joint intentions among the members of the group; but,
dominating power may be grounded in group membership (white people in
Western racialized hierarchies, men in patriarchy) even if that group,
or some of its members, do not meet the metaphysical requirements for
group agency. At least for those who think unexercised power is
sufficient for domination, a man who rejects the patriarchy of his
society may still dominate women because of what he is in a position
to do--e.g., have his testimony in court taken more seriously
than a woman's--even if he explicitly rejects and tries to
undermine patriarchal institutions.



A minority position in the literature sees domination fundamentally as
a relation between groups, where any domination between individuals is
parasitic on group membership. If this is true, the domination of one
individual by another counts as such only because one belongs to a
dominant group and the other belongs to a subordinate group
(Wartenberg 1990).


### 2.2 Can Non-Agents Dominate?



That agents alone can be dominated is rarely disputed; but can agents
alone dominate? What about non-agents like institutions or systems or
ideologies? Vaclav Havel's (1991: 136-138) example of a
grocer in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia recurs in the literature as a
possible example of domination by a system, where particular agents
are merely conduits (Lovett 2010; Krause 2013; Blunt 2015). The grocer
posts slogans favorable to the regime in the window of his shop. By
posting the slogans, he both signals his cooperation with power and
extends its reach. Similarly, Sharon Krause (2013: 194) recalls her
mother's insistence that she take smaller, more
"ladylike", steps and overcome her natural stride. Perhaps
the ideology Krause's mother both obeys and enforces is what
dominates, rather than any particular agent or agents (see also
Foucault 1975 [1977: 26-27]). Workers who have deeply imbibed
the values of capitalism might be another example (see Thompson 2013,
2018): e.g., someone who accepts whatever meaningless work is
available because their sense of self-worth depends on not being a
"slacker". While it may be that the values of capitalism
are a social construct produced over time by agents for their own
benefit, if what motivates the worker is their own corrupted sense of
self-worth, it makes sense to think that they might be dominated by an
ideology rather than other agents.



The central question is whether we can understand possible examples of
domination by systems or ideologies as instances of domination
*by* agents *through* systems or ideologies. An
affirmative answer is more often assumed than argued for in the
literature, but Frank Lovett tries to motivate it with this
example:



> 
> 
> Imagine a society in which the law of property recognizes the
> possibility of ownership in human beings, but in which it just happens
> that there are as yet no slaves. After some time, however, slaves are
> imported, and the law duly supports their masters' rights of
> ownership. Later still, the masters repent, and manumit their slaves.
> (2010: 48-49)
> 
> 
> 



Lovett thinks we will agree that domination occurs only during the
period after slaves are imported and before their manumission: the
legal system that allowed property in slaves *enabled*
domination but did not dominate.



The proposed lesson of another thought experiment--this one from
Gwilym David Blunt (2015: 17-18)--is that domination without
agents is conceivable but impracticable, at least in the near term.
Suppose, a legislator organized a dominating regime and died soon
after, but not before programming "a series of automatons
... that cannot be reprogrammed" to enforce his will
against a subordinate group in the name of a privileged group. If this
is domination, it cannot be domination by the deceased legislator (on
the assumption that the dead have no agency), or by the automatons
(who are assumed to be not sophisticated enough to count as agents),
or by the privileged population (who did not write the laws and cannot
control the automatons); therefore, it must be the system itself that
dominates.



In general, the disagreement about whether agents alone dominate
tracks the division between theories directly influenced by
neorepublicans and those descended from other traditions. The
neorepublican preoccupation with the master/slave relation makes it
natural to focus on domination by agents: to be dominated by a master
is, obviously, to be dominated by an agent. Working from this central
example, the republican tradition tends to see institutions, systems,
and ideologies as sources of power that make mastery possible rather
than as standalone sources of domination without agents. If, instead,
our attention is focused on the ways power can shape the consciousness
of those under its sway, domination by, e.g., patriarchy itself
becomes more plausible, even without the looming presence of
particular patriarchs.


## 3. Does Domination Require the Exercise of Power?


### 3.1 Domination as a Power Structure



One of the most persistent recent disagreements concerns whether or
not domination requires the exercise of power. Neorepublicans tend to
link domination to what agents *are in a position to do* or
*have the capacity to do* rather than what agents actually do.
This is mostly because of the role domination plays within
neorepublican ideas of freedom. The classical liberal theory of
freedom--the neorepublican's primary competitor and
foil--is supposedly defective just because it identifies freedom
with the absence of *actual* choice-interference.
Neorepublicans say their advantage is the way they highlight how
*potential* interference reduces freedom. This is the point of
the most famous example from the republican tradition: the slaves of a
kind or lazy master are slaves nonetheless, and so are
paradigmatically unfree even though their master is too kind or lazy
to interfere with them.



What does it look like to have power that counts as domination even
though unexercised? In addition to the language encountered above
highlighting the "capacities" of the powerful,
neorepublicans emphasize what Lovett (2010) calls the
*structure* instead of the *outcome* of dominating power
relations. Whether or not an employer can fire their employees at will
is about how the employer/employee relationship is structured; whether
or not an employer actually fires an employee, or whether or not the
employee manages not to starve because they have the job, manifests
the outcome of the relationship. This way of examining social
relationships looks away from how empowered agents exercise their
power to the nature of that power itself. We do not stop objecting to
paradigmatic dominators merely because they promise to make kind and
judicious use of their powers; emancipation seems to require that they
*cease to have* that kind of power. This highlights
neorepublican doubts about whether self-regulation by the powerful can
reduce domination (Lovett 2010: 97). At an extreme, Pettit has said
that domination persists without "external checks that remove or
replace the interference option or put it cognitively off the
menu"; that domination is reduced only by
"exogenous" forces; or, if internal, forces that
"disable" in the manner of deep-seated neuroses (2012:
63). 


### 3.2 Does Character Matter after All?



There are two primary lines of objection to the claim that only a
change in how power relations are structured can check domination,
rather than changes to the outcome of the relation or to the character
of the empowered. The first is that it fails to capture realities of
what the dominated really object to; the second is that it leads to
significant over-generalization.



No one denies that victims of power object to the outcomes of its use,
and not merely to their initial vulnerability to that power.
(Certainly, neorepublicans want to say that *both* are
objectionable.) But if we insist that domination refers properly only
to the structure of a power relation, and not to outcomes of that
relation, we may have a difficult time explaining the standard use of
*domination* to refer to overwhelming power wielded against the
defenseless. Suppose Columbus had merely sailed around the margins of
the "New World" without making landfall, and that his
power to exploit and destroy native cultures was never exercised. Is
this counterfactual history still a story of European domination? If
not, it is tempting to identify European domination with the actual
harm inflicted on people who were not equipped to resist them (Katz
2017).



There is reason to think, too, that the dominated sometimes have
complaints specifically about the character of the powerful. This
issue has been revisited in the work of Christopher Lebron (2013) and
Melvin Rogers (forthcoming). Rogers especially insists that theories
of domination influenced by neorepublicanism overplay the irrelevance
of character to dominating power. His recent work on black American
republicans like Martin Delany (1852 [1968]), Hosea Easton (1837
[1999]), Maria W. Stewart (1987), David Walker (1829 [2003]), reveals
a contrasting emphasis on the "comportment" of white
Americans. Opposing race-based systems of domination requires not just
"freedom from the arbitrary power" of white Americans, but
a "transformation of the system of cultural value in which
blacks occupy a lower position of worth" (Rogers, forthcoming).
This transformation requires not only the external checks on
domination achievable by legal reforms, but a transformation in the
hearts of white Americans. Rogers argues that neorepublican theories
of domination are formed by resistance to *political* slavery,
where the essential humanity of the slave is not in question; unlike
*chattel* slavery, which was built on and maintained by an
ideological commitment to white supremacy and black inferiority. Legal
reforms may be sufficient to counter political slavery: they represent
a turn of the legal order toward closer alignment with the already
acknowledged value of the enslaved. However, legal reforms alone,
while necessary, are not enough when this value is systematically
denied.


### 3.3 Over-Generalization Problems for Structure-Based Accounts



Over-generalization worries are the most common objection to
neorepublican approaches to domination. If domination is just the
*capacity* for arbitrary interference, and given that such
capacities seem ubiquitous, domination may be ordinary to the point of
triviality. Even when sitting around minding their own business,
physically strong people have the capacity to overpower weaker people;
even if they never do, people with a natural gift for persuasion have
the capacity to talk the gullible out of their savings (Friedman 2008:
251). Also, if the primary function of the state is to minimize
domination, neorepublicanism suggests that the state should try to
make people less strong or less persuasive in order to reduce their
capacity for arbitrary interference. That is unsavory. An obvious fix
is to insist that only "actual or attempted arbitrary
interference" dominates (Friedman 2008: 252).



For some feminists, the over-generalization worry is specifically that
neorepublicans make relationships of care and dependency unreasonably
suspect. A caregiver who would not dream of harming their charges
nevertheless has the capacity to: infecting wounds instead of cleaning
them, throwing someone down the stairs instead of helping them up
(Friedman 2008: 254). Pettit acknowledges this feature of his theory
when he claims that caring and uncaring mothers--and presumably
caring and uncaring fathers--alike dominate their children in a
state of nature (Pettit 1999: 119-120). The alternative is to
insist that though care providers may stand in a relationship of
unequal power with a vulnerable dependent, unless this power is abused
it does not dominate. Domination, instead of mere power, requires
active violation of moral standards and/or compromising the best
interests of others (Kittay 1999: 33-34).



The attractiveness of this alternate depends on how we understand
powers or capacities. If *A* has a power or capacity to interfere
so long as it is *possible in any sense* for *A* to do so,
as Pettit sometimes suggests, criticism focusing on the value of care
is damaging: clearly, it is [e.g.] physically possible for caregivers
and parents to interfere with their dependents. If, however, *A*
does not have the power to interfere so long as appropriate penalties
are in place for such interference, the objection may not be so
potent. In other words, it's not mere possibility that matters,
but social or legal possibility--roughly, what it is possible to
do without risk of sanction from other members of your social group or
by agents of the state (see List & Valentini 2016). A hallmark of feminist
ethics and political philosophy has been the insistence that power
relations inside the home often manifest domination, even though the
home can be a center of loving care and dependence, and that legal
regulation--against spousal abuse or child neglect--might
reduce that domination (Costa 2013: 928). Such laws, of course, do not
make interference impossible *simpliciter*; instead, it makes
interference risky and potentially costly.



Also, shifting from domination as mere power to domination as abuse of
power may lead to other unattractive results, especially given broadly
feminist commitments. If domination requires actual or attempted
interference, women who avoid interference by "seduction,
ingratiation, [or] avoidance" will not count as dominated (Costa
2013: 926). *This feature of neorepublican accounts--the
insistence that domination is the "mere condition of being
vulnerable"--may be exactly what makes the concept useful
for feminist philosophy* (Laborde 2008: 152).



There are other proposed counter-examples to the claim that the
"capacity to interfere ... at will" dominates
(Shapiro 2016: 21). What about "a playground bully" who is
"able to beat up any of the smaller children but is widely known
only to beat up black children"? Does the bully dominate the
white children just as much as the black children? What about someone
like 1950s American senator Joseph McCarthy? He had the same power to
interfere in the lives of right-wing and left-wing Americans; but
citizens on the left had far more reason to fear him. Perhaps the
intuitive judgment here is that the bully only dominates the black
children, and that McCarthy only dominates left-wing citizens. (Both
examples are from Ian Shapiro 2012: 324; 2016: 21). It should be
noted, however, that the persuasiveness of these examples depends in
part on whether we think domination is the sole political evil, at
least in the sense that all other political evils can be addressed
most effectively by minimizing domination. The black children and the
left-wing citizens in Shapiro's examples are obviously worse off
than the white children/right-wing citizens. If we diagnose their
condition only by appeal to the evil of domination, Shapiro's
examples are damaging to the idea that domination can be an
unexercised power. This is true even though there may not be much
practical space between Shapiro's account of domination and
Pettit's, given that Shapiro speaks of complaints against
domination as complaints against a "power relationship".
Interestingly, Shapiro emphasizes the possibility that someone may be
vulnerable to domination without being dominated, and that
vulnerability to domination--like domination itself--is
morally significant and represents an injustice (2016: 22). While the
idea of domination *as* vulnerability recurs in the
neorepublican literature, there is relatively little examination of
this intermediate category: those who are vulnerable to domination
without being dominated. (Perhaps the closest consideration in
Pettit's work is his brief discussion of "virtual
domination" in 1997: 54.)



The controversy about whether completely dormant power can dominate
continues, but there is broad consensus that you can be dominated even
if nobody is actively dominating you *at the moment*. Even if
there is no domination without an actual display of power over you or
people like you at some time, domination might persist when
unexercised precisely because of its previous exercise. As Wartenberg
(1990) says, the actual exercise of power can "condition"
a social relationship in a "longstanding" manner. If power
has been exercised over you in the past, or over someone like you
(perhaps because you are both members of a subordinated social group),
this will affect how you relate to those in power. For example,
suppose you know that the boss can fire you at will. He has not fired
you or even threatened to do so, and so has not actually exercised his
power over you. Even so, you have seen him exercise this power over
other employees. As a result, you do whatever you're told for
fear of what the boss *can do* to you and *has done* to
others. This motivates the view that your domination does not require
the active exercise of power against you even though it might require
the active exercise of power against *someone* relevantly like
you. Of course, this leads to further questions: e.g., How recent must
active exercises of power be in order to condition ongoing social
relationships where power is dormant? Such questions have received
relatively little attention thus far (but see Hirschmann 2003). 


## 4. What Kind of Power Is Domination?



Exercised or unexercised, what kind of power is domination? If
domination is about how social relationships are structured, what is
*A* in a position to do if *A* dominates *B*? If
domination requires the exercise of power, how does *A* use their
power when they dominate *B*?



Along one dimension, we can sort answers to these questions into the
*moralized* vs. the *non-moralized*. For a moralized
theory, identifying domination requires us to settle more foundational
questions about what is morally right or wrong, just or unjust. For
example, if we say that dominating power is the power to violate human
rights, our theory of domination depends on a theory of human
rights--obviously a moral theory. Non-moralized theories hold
that we can identify domination without reference to theories of the
right or the good. For example, if we say that dominating power is
power over the means of production, our theory of domination will
depend on a [plausibly] descriptive theory of what counts as the means
of production. 



Of course, those who insist that domination can be defined without
making moral judgments aren't usually committed to what Ian
Carter calls "value-independence" about the phenomenon, or
"the complete detachment of our analysis from all ethical
concerns" (2015: 280-281). Contributions to the contemporary discussion of
domination from all-comers are generally motivated by profound ethical
concerns.



Sorting is also required along another dimension. In addition to
questions of moralization or non-moralization, there is the question
of how domination relates to the use of power to dictate norms and
rules, or the use of power to claim authority. Is domination always an
attempt to rule? Does domination always involve a claim--however
mistaken--by dominators that their power is legitimate? Does
domination always involve an attempt by the powerful to demand that
the dominated conform to norms? If you answer any of these questions
in the affirmative, you advocate a *norm-dependent* theory of
domination.



Confusion is easy here, given that moralized theories often appeal to
norms and rules. The difference between such moralized theories and
non-moralized but norm-dependent theories depends on the difference
between *correct* moral norms/rules as distinguished from just
any norm or rule. Norm-dependent theories say that domination always
involves power exercised through norms and rules that some regard as
legitimate--perhaps the dominator, perhaps the dominated, or
perhaps both. As we will see, for theories that are not just
norm-dependent but also *moralized*, domination always involves
a failure to respect the moral status of agents as sources of the
norms that govern them. For a merely norm-dependent theory, the
domination of a patriarch might be essentially connected to the
patriarch's claim that he deserves obedience from his family.
Obviously, whether or not someone claims or doesn't claim to
deserve obedience is a merely descriptive matter; as a result, such a
theory is not moralized. The legitimacy of the patriarch's
authority is merely sociological, not moral. If a theory of domination
says instead that the patriarch dominates because his demand for
obedience unjustly undermines the right of his spouse and children to
shape the norms that govern them, that theory is both norm-dependent
*and* moralized. A theory that depends in part on an account of
unjust infringements is clearly moralized.



It is not always easy to sort theories into these categories. The
sorting is complicated by the fact that whether a theory is moralized
or norm-dependent is sometimes a matter of active controversy. (This
is particularly true of Pettit's theory of domination.) In what
follows, theories will be sorted to reflect the intentions of the
theorist--at least as far as these intentions can be
discerned.



Once we recognize the distinction between moralization and
norm-dependency, we end up with four kinds of answer to the question
"What kind of power is domination?" Assuming for now that
only agents (represented here by *A* and *B*) can dominate
or be dominated:




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | *Norm-Independent* | *Norm-Dependent* |
| *Non-Moralized* | If *A* dominates *B*, *A* has or exercises
uncontrolled power over what *B* is in a position to do.  | If *A* dominates *B*, *A* has or exercises
sociologically legitimate power over what *B* is in a position to
do.  |
| *Moralized* | If *A* dominates *B*, *A* has or exercises power
over what *B* is in a position to do by violating
*B*'s rights or undermining *B*'s interests with
impunity.  | If *A* dominates *B*, A has or exercises power over
what *B* is in a position to do that is both sociologically
legitimate and unconstrained by institutions designed to protect
*B*'s rights and interests. |



This section will examine theories from each division, with their
basic motivations and primary exemplars. 


### 4.1 Non-Moralized, Norm-Independent Theories



Theories identifying domination with even unexercised power tend away
from moralization and norm-dependence. If *A* has a great deal of
power over *B*, *A* will be well positioned to wrong
*B*, or to force *B* at least to act like *A* has
authority. Non-moralized/norm-independent theories maintain that this
is not essential to domination. What is essential? Roughly, that
*A* has an unchecked or uncontrolled power to impose their will
on *B*, to shape the framework of choices available to *B*
so that *B* is highly likely to cooperate with *A*. The
disagreements among non-moralized/norm-independent theorists are about
the kind of checks or control that might prevent domination, and about
how imposition works.



Most non-moralized/norm-independent theories follow in the wake of
neorepublicanism, and share its basic approach--theorizing
domination in two movements: identifying a kind of power manifest in
domination but also in non-dominating social relationships; then
identifying the feature of domination that separates it from the power
manifest in those non-dominating relationships. Usually, the second
movement describes the controls or checks present in non-dominating
social relationships and absent from the dominating ones. These two
motives will be treated in order below:



First, what kind of social power is of interest to a theory of
domination? Neorepublicans like Pettit focus on the capacity to
interfere with an individual's choices, by replacing, removing,
and/or misrepresenting these choices. *A* can interfere with
*B*'s choices by *removing* potential objects of
choice: suppose *A* runs over *B*'s bicycle,
destroying it. This removes the option of riding *B*'s
bike. Suppose instead *A* knifes the tire: this replaces
*B*'s option of riding their bike with another option:
riding the bike after the tire is replaced or repaired.
*Removal* and *replacement* are both *objective*
forms of choice interference: mind-independent alternatives been
removed or replaced. Misrepresentation of options is
*cognitive*: e.g., *A* lies to *B* and says that only
idiots have bikes like *B*'s. If *B* is credulous and
refuses to ride their bike from embarrassment, *A* manages in
this way to interfere with *B* by misrepresentation (see Pettit
2012).



This general emphasis on choice is what provokes the
over-generalization worries already introduced (Shapiro 2012; Friedman
2008; Blunt 2015; McCammon 2015). Some choices clearly have more
weight than others. Nobody thinks having no choice about where to sit
in a cafe matters compared to having no choice about where to
live. Connecting the former as well as the latter to dominating
varieties of choice-interference, because both might represent, e.g.,
the removal or replacement of an option, seems to exaggerate the idea
of domination. If, however, we want to keep domination and the
reduction of freedom conceptually connected, there is reason to see
domination in all power to interfere, at least when that power is
outside the control of the interferee.



While Pettit analyzes domination in terms of choice-interference, his
favorite heuristic focuses directly on dominated agents, and the way
they are social related to their dominators. To be dominated, for
Pettit, is to fail "the eyeball test": i.e., you cannot
"look others in the eye without reason for the fear or deference
that a power of interference might inspire" (2012: 84). Other
theories share this emphasis on domination as a kind of power within a
social relationship and tend to prefer it to talk of
choice-interference (Lovett 2010; McCammon 2015).



What is a social relationship? *A*'s social relatedness to
*B*, first of all, seems to require strategic relatedness, in the
sense that what *B* is likely to do is a function, at least in
part, of what *A* does. To get from social relatedness to
domination has other requirements. It is difficult to see how *A*
could dominate *B* unless *A* has more power over *B*
than *B* has over *A* within their social relationship.
Further, for *A* to have power over *B* plausibly requires
that *B* cannot easily exit the relationship. If someone can
easily get a new job just as good as the one they have already, their
"exit costs" are low, and they will have a correspondingly
low dependence on the social relationship--probably too low for
domination to occur (Lovett 2010). It may be that *A*'s
power over *B*, and *B*'s exit costs from their social
relationship, are not really separate conditions, that
*A*'s power over *B* is a function of *A*'s
control of resources *B* cannot access except through *A*
(see Pansardi 2013).



A capacity for choice-interference, or social relatedness however
rendered, is necessary but not sufficient for domination on a
non-moralized/norm-independent theory. To get domination, something
more is required than mere choice-interference or power within a
social relationship.



Neorepublicans first referred to this "something more" as
the *arbitrariness* of dominating power, and still do with some
regularity, but Pettit himself now favors the language of control or
the absence of control (2012: 57-58). This move was an attempt
to emphasize the non-moralized nature of his theory. (For criticism
connected to this shift in Pettit's presentation, see especially
Christman 1998, Costa 2007, and McMahon 2005.) The terminological
shift was probably wise, given the natural tendency to contrast
arbitrary power with power backed by good reasons or power put to good
purpose. Arbitrary power, for neorepublicans, has never been merely
unreasoned power. Though Pettit earlier emphasized the connection
between arbitrary power and power that fails to track the
"interests" of those subject to it, he measured interests
not by an independent notion of the objective good or objectively
reasonable, but by appeal to what interests are "avowed"
or "avowal-ready" (2006: 275-276). The language of
control also has echoes in his earlier work. For example, in
*Republicanism* he says that an act is arbitrary "by
virtue of the controls--or more precisely the lack of
controls--under which it materializes" (1997: 55). This
shift toward domination as uncontrolled power follows Pettit's
more recent attempts to contrast domination with well-constructed
democracy, but the opposition of democratically constrained power and
dominating power reflects his earlier insistence that we cannot know
when power is arbitrary except "by recourse to public discussion
in which people may speak for themselves and for the groups to which
they belong" (1997: 56). Here, too, he connects his own theory
to Iris Young's account of domination in *Justice and the
Politics of Difference*. Young says that domination is the
"opposite" of "thorough social and political
democracy" and defines life within structures of domination as
living under others who 



> 
> 
> can determine without reciprocation the conditions of [the dominated
> person's] actions, either directly or by virtue of the
> structural consequences of their actions. (1990 [2011: 38])
> 
> 
> 



Of course, for a non-moralized theory, identifying domination as
anti-democratic must involve a non-moralized account of democracy.
This is not necessarily a problem, given that we can describe
political institutions as "democratic" in a merely
descriptive sense. (e.g., someone who says, "The expansion of
the franchise leads to a more democratic society" might simply
mean that a larger percentage of the population gets to vote and think
that is a terrible idea and a reason not to expand the franchise.)
What is more difficult is showing how even broadly democratic states
are non-dominating if we think the absence of domination involves
literal *control* of the state by those it governs. It is clear
that the vast majority of individual citizens do not control their
state in any meaningful way; given the enormity of contemporary
states, it is unclear how they could. We might say that they should
rest content with a fair share of control, or with a fair chance at
control. But to say that we avoid domination when we have a fair share
of control looks very much like a way of moralizing the theory, since
*fairness* is clearly a moral notion. (Pettit's primary
attempt to explain non-domination in terms of democratic political
arrangements can be found especially in the final three chapters of
*On the People's Terms.* For more interpretation and
criticism of Pettit's idea of control, see Arnold & Harris
2017, Mayer 2015, Schink 2013, Sharon 2015, Simpson 2017, and Kolodny
forthcoming.)



Frank Lovett argues that avoiding domination does not require
democracy, but instead subjecting the powerful to reliably enforced
and widely known rules. Perhaps democracy does, in fact, most
effectively reduce domination, but this should follow from substantive
argument, not from the mere analysis of concepts (Lovett 2010). Also,
there is reason to think that subordinate groups are less dominated
whenever their overlords must abide by reliably enforced and widely
known rules, even when those rules do not express the will of the
subordinated in any way. Lovett uses the following case to make his
point:



> 
> 
> Suppose that for various historical, economic, and cultural reasons,
> one group in some society manages to acquire a preponderance of social
> power, which it wields over the other groups in that society directly
> and without constraint, much to its own benefit. Since the subordinate
> groups are in no position to challenge directly the preeminence of the
> powerful group, they instead demand only that the various rights and
> privileges of the latter be written down, codified, and impartially
> enforced by independent judges. In time, let us suppose, the powerful
> group accedes to this demand, on the view that since the rules will be
> designed to benefit them, after all, there will be no significant cost
> in their doing so. (2012: 147)
> 
> 
> 



If power is organized and systematized in law, it does sound odd to
call it *arbitrary*. After all, it may be entirely predictable
in such circumstances. Lovett tacks closer to the commonsense idea
that what is arbitrary is unpredictable, unreasoned, and unfettered by
rules. He even claims that "real-world systems of
domination" like Jim Crow and South African apartheid might
cease to be dominating in possible worlds where they managed
"strict adherence to explicit rules and procedures" (2010:
101). That such regimes would remain oppressive is obvious, but he
believes this should be explained by the presence of other political
evils than domination. Instead of a *substantive* account of
arbitrary power--where power dominates when it isn't forced
to track the will of those subject to it--he recommends
*proceduralism*: power dominates because it isn't
"reliably constrained by effective rules, procedures, or goals
that are common knowledge to all persons or groups concerned"
(Lovett 2010: 96-97; 2012; for more treatment of the debate
between Pettit and Lovett about the nature of arbitrary power, see the
section on
 "What Counts as Arbitrary Power?"
 in the entry on
 republicanism.)



Lovett's arguments for proceduralism have provoked several
clarifications of what substantivism requires. Proceduralism
highlights what Gwilym David Blunt (2015) calls "sources" of
domination that are *personal* as opposed to *social*,
and "sites" of domination that are *interactional*
as opposed to *systemic*. Widely known and reliably enforced
checks on power, of the kind emphasized by proceduralism, really do
reduce domination enabled by personal sources of power like
*A*'s possession of more guns or guile than *B*,
especially when this power is expressed in the interactions of
*A* and *B* as individual agents. If *A* and *B*
are neighbors, and *A* has a huge stockpile of weapons and
*B* has none, it makes sense to think of *B*'s
complaint against *A* as a matter of their intense vulnerability
to power constrained only by *A*'s whims. Substantivism may
be better equipped to recognize domination in what Blunt calls social
"sources" and systemic "sites". In actual
systems of domination, *A* often has power over *B* not
because *A* alone has more power (e.g., by having more guns of
their own), but because *A* and *B* both live within a
system intended to advantage *A*'s group and disadvantage
*B*'s. Often, in such cases, *A* has power to adjust
the system, or access to such power, while *B* does not.



There is another way to account for proceduralism's insistence
that reliably enforced, common-knowledge rules reduce domination even
without democratic constraints. When *A* alone decides whether
and how to harass *B*, *A*'s power to harass *B*
is checked only by *A*'s sense of what is best or what
should be done. Suppose *A* lives in a society that introduces a
reliably enforced, common-knowledge rule that *A* can harass
*B* only by putting *B* in the stocks but may not whip
*B*. This changes the situation both for *A* and *B*.
Now, *A* alone does not decide whether and how to harass
*B*: now, *A* is not checked simply by what *A* thinks
they have reason to do. In this way, *A*'s power is less
"deliberatively isolated" (McCammon 2015). If this is
right, domination can be reduced even by non-democratic reforms.
However, laws and other limits on individual power may be formed by
whole groups in a deliberatively isolated manner, as under Jim Crow
and apartheid, if the members of *A*'s group have input
into the rules, but the members of *B*'s group do not.
Empowered groups often dictate the terms of their dealings with
subordinated groups based only on their own sense of how things should
be, and the deliberatively isolated power of *groups* may be
strengthened by measures that reduce the deliberative isolation of
*individuals*. 


### 4.2 Moralized, Norm-Independent Theories



Norm-independent, *moralized* theories of domination are less
influential than non-moralized varieties. Even so, their appeal is
easy to see. There is straightforward reason to moralize domination:
i.e., dominators use their power to do bad things. Slave masters rape
and assault their slaves. Men within patriarchy rape and assault
women. Domination allows evil deeds go unpunished. This impunity is
perhaps what matters most to those who think of domination in a
moralized way. To be sure, not that every act of moral wrong manifests
domination. When a master tortures his slave, this is domination; but
when a slave gets the drop on his master and tortures him it may not
be, even on the assumption that both cases of torture are wrong. Why?
The difference is in what the master will face as a consequence for
torturing the slave, as opposed to what the slave will face for
torturing the master. The master wrongs the slave with impunity; the
slave wrongs the master only at grave risk from the enforcers of the
system that enslaves him. To get *domination* instead of
*wrongdoing*, it is necessary to include a requirement like
this: as a first pass, *A* dominates *B* just because
*A* can wrong *B* in the context of an asymmetric power
relation favoring *A*. If *A* can wrong *B* with
impunity, and *B* knows this, *A* will be well-positioned to
exercise control over *B*. *B* will know that refusal to
comply with *A* may result in violation of *B*'s
rights or interests.



The most common approaches to moralization without norm-dependence
couch domination in terms of violating "basic" or
"best" interests. Allen (1999), Lukes (2005), and Wartenberg
(1990) are primary advocates of a "basic" interests
approach. Kittay (1999: 34), Laborde (2013: 285), and Shapiro
(2012: 310; 2016: 23) share an emphasis on "best"
interests. Shapiro looks to local custom for guidance about the
standard for legitimate power, unless those customs dramatically
undercut the interests of the less powerful. For example, he is happy
to leave judgments of legitimate parental power to parents, except for
those who would deny their children education and healthcare. The
baseline is what is necessary to live as "a normal adult"
in the context of contemporary democracies (2012: 294). Laborde
moralizes basic interests by appeal to what "we have reason to
value" (2013: 285), as opposed to what people might actually
value. A non-moralized account of basic interests, of course, might
connect interests to what people actually value, regardless of what
they have reason to value. But this would leave us in the awkward
position of being unable to recognize domination in brainwashed slaves
who value their subordination. 


### 4.3 Non-Moralized, Norm-Dependent Theories



When we take a hard look at the most obvious cases of
domination--masters, tyrants, patriarchs--we'll
probably notice that they all claim authority. The Paradigms all
typically think of themselves as the ones who make the rules, and that
their subjects have an obligation to comply. To say that dominators,
as such, always claim this kind of authority is to endorse a
norm-dependent theory: that *A* dominates *B* by virtue of
having a kind of socially legitimate power over them. Not all social
power operates in this way--or doesn't seem to. The
neighborhood mob boss who comes by your shop demanding protection
money almost certainly does not expect you to think of his command,
"Pay up or else!", as an expression of legitimate
authority backed by sanctions. Plausibly, the typical mob boss cares
only that you recognize him as a source of credible threats and
comply. According to most norm-dependent theories, this means that the
mob boss does not dominate. Domination is always power "under
color of right". The mob boss acts under no such colors. The
patriarch, by contrast, believes that his commands create obligations
for those within his household; and this - not merely his power to
interfere with choice--is why he dominates. Here, norm-dependent
theories part company from their norm-independent competitors: the
latter will tend to see both the mob boss and the patriarch as sources
of domination.



As canvassed above, norm-dependence and moralization are separate
issues. We don't need a theory of the right or the good to tell
us whether someone has power legitimized by local social norms or
laws. Of course, we *do* need a moral theory to tell us if
social norms or laws are right or just or truly legitimate. As we will
see in the next section, the most influential norm-dependent theories
of domination tie it to a specific failure to respect the
*actual* moral authority of the dominated, and so offer a
moralized as well as norm-dependent theory.



Why prefer norm-dependence to norm-independence? Often, the move to
norm-dependence is motivated by familiar worries about
over-generalization. The world may be full of uncontrolled powers of
choice interference, but it is less common for one agent to regard
someone else as a source of binding norms. I may have an uncontrolled
power to interfere with your choices whenever I can take the last seat
in a cafe before you can get to it; this obviously has nothing
to do with any kind of authority over you. The latter power seems less
ubiquitous and more serious.



Also, norm-dependent, non-moralized conceptions are perhaps best
equipped to diagnose domination where the dominated have internalized
justifications for their status. Neorepublicans often highlight how
victims of domination don't have enough power to contest their
position, but what about cases where victims of domination are
*unwilling* to contest because they accept a worldview that
justifies their domination? Michael Thompson calls such unwillingness
a manifestation of *constitutive* domination: the way 



> 
> 
> norms, institutions, and values of the community shape the rationality
> of subjects to accept forms of power and social relations and
> collective goals as legitimate forms of authority. (2018: 44) 
> 
> 
> 



In so doing, he resists standard neorepublican talk of
"arbitrary" power. Domination is constitutive just because
it is *not* regarded as arbitrary by those under its sway.
Instead, he claims, domination is the expression of widely
rationalized and internalized norms. Certainly, if we agree that all
power necessarily involves legitimacy claims (see Azmanova 2012:
49-50), it makes sense to think that intense varieties of social
power, like domination, will go hand-in-hand with thoroughgoing
acceptance of legitimacy claims.



According to Marxist and Marxist-inflected theories like
Thompson's, neorepublicans are misled by their paradigms.
Neorepublicans get their touchstones of domination from slavery and
traditional despotism--varieties supposedly more prevalent in
pre-modern societies, where the threat of violence was the primary
currency of domination. Instead, according to Marxist theories, we
should see domination in the ideologies that make violence and
coercion less necessary: for example, when the redistribution of pubic
goods to private elites is widely accepted as natural or as the result
of free exchange, even by many who suffer as a result.



The internalization *by the dominated* of norms supposedly
legitimizing their domination is not the only way to connect
domination to internalized norms. Christopher Lebron points to another
possibility: perhaps what is necessary isn't that the dominated
accept a rationalization of their condition, but that the
*dominators* do so. The difference between domination and more
benign hierarchies, he claims, is that dominators control
"legitimizing myths" that hide their domination. The
simple fact that a worker has a boss does not indicate domination; it
may instead indicate only a mutually beneficial arrangement (Lebron
2013: 56). A boss comes to dominate by accepting and promoting myths
that justify their ascendance. What matters, on this account, is that
the dominating group imbibe such myths, that *their*
consciousness is shaped, e.g., so that their power is mistaken for a
feature of nature, or a result of their innate merits or just deserts,
not that the dominated manifest a consciousness so altered. 



The norm-dependent theories encountered so far look to institutions
and systems to embody and promote social norms. Regardless of whether
institutions and systems *themselves* dominate, standard
norm-dependent theories tend to see the existence of institutions as a
necessary condition for domination through norms: e.g., the
patriarch's power to project authority in his family depends on
widely accepted attitudes about the place of fathers in the
institution of the family; the slave master's power to project
authority to his slaves depends on an economic and political system
permitting property in human lives. Gwilym David Blunt's theory stands
apart by being norm-dependent without requiring background
institutions. According to Blunt, even the mob boss has power over
norms: in the language introduced above, this is an
*interactional* site of domination drawn from a
*personal* source: i.e., power between agents drawn from the
mob boss' personal control of guns and muscle. Unlike
norm-independent theorists such as Lovett, Blunt claims that
*all* social relationships involve norms. Insofar as the mob
boss and the shop owner are socially related, this involves more than
non-normative elements like strategic relatedness or exit costs. The
asymmetry of power that matters is an asymmetry in the power to define
the status of other parties in a social relationship. The mob boss has
power enough to assign the shop owner an inferior place in their
social relationships, and set up himself as the one who makes the
rules in the relationship. In this way, Blunt believes he can preserve
the standard neorepublican intuition that powerful agents like the mob
boss can be dominators within a norm-dependent framework.


### 4.4 Moralized, Norm-Dependent Theories



It doesn't look like we must appeal to moral concepts to say
whether a powerful person can or cannot dictate social norms; but, for
an influential cluster of theories, the norm-dependence of domination
is constructed in specifically moral terms. This is an understandable
move. After all, if we think domination is always expressed through
norms, and we think that domination is *morally* illegitimate
even when socially legitimate, it makes sense to think of domination
as a specific failure to reckon with *morally legitimate*
norms. For theories of domination that are moralized as well as
norm-dependent, we diagnose domination not just as power expressed
through authority claims, but as a specific kind of morally
illegitimate authority. 



Given that the most influential moralized/norm-dependent
theories--Henry Richardson's and Rainer
Forst's--developed either within or in direct response to
neorepublicanism, it is not surprising to find here a similar
two-movement approach to domination; first giving an account of power
manifest in domination but also in benign forms of power, and second,
giving an account of what makes domination distinct and unjust. For
Richardson, the broader category of benign or even legitimate power is
the power to "modify the rights and duties of others"
(2002: 34). An agent may have this power without dominating anyone;
dominators exercise an unauthorized variety of this "normative
power". Richardson here is motivated again by the desire to
steer around what he thinks are neorepublican false positives:
criminals like the mob boss do not, he claims, dominate. If an
uncontrolled capacity to interfere with choice dominates, we are
dominated by the mere possibility that our neighbors will slash our
tires in the night. Secret tire-slashing may be arbitrary
choice-interference, but it serves no obvious role in wielding
normative power.



Forst favors the language of *reasons* in identifying the
broader category of power of which domination is a subset. All social
power, he says, is power "within the space of
reasons"--specifically *justifying* reasons. This is
why he calls his account of power *noumenal*: power is not
based merely on the control of material resources, but instead on
influence over what other agents see as justified thought or action.
That you have a lot of some material resource--say,
money--is irrelevant from the perspective of power unless you can
use it to alter what others think they have most reason to do. In
general, Forst says, power is "the capacity of *A* to
motivate *B* to think or do something that *B* would
otherwise not have thought or done" (2015: 115). It is clear
enough that such power has innocent varieties: when a teacher shows a
student a new way to solve a math problem, they motivate them to think
and do in ways they would not otherwise. Gentle persuasion between
friends manifests the same power.



So, both Richardson and Forst try to situate domination within a
broader, essentially normative phenomenon, the power to place others
under [supposed] duties or the power to affect what others regard as
justified. What, then, makes domination distinct and unjust? For both
Richardson and Forst, domination involves a violation of our rights
relative to the normative domain. Dominators claim authority or power
within the space of reasons that properly belongs to the dominated.
Domination is power unbound by the moral standing of its victims as
co-authors of the norms that bind them. For Richardson, who focuses
specifically on power in the political context, the arbitrariness of
normative power manifests itself along several moralized dimensions:
dominating power fails to express "fair" deliberative
processes among "free and equal citizens" that respect
"fundamental rights and liberties" (2002: 52). The slave
master dominates because he takes for himself a power that belongs
properly to his slaves: we have a moral right to decide together what
our political rights and duties will be. He is able to do this because
his role as a master of slaves has institutional support. If one of
his slaves runs away, he can call on the state to track the slave down
and return them. This is how real dominators are distinct from deluded
claimants to normative power. Imagine a mob boss who comes to believe
that he speaks for God. He might believe that he has a power to create
rights and duties; even so, without social and legal backing analogous
to what a tyrant or slave master or patriarch can depend on, the mob
boss will not succeed even in creating illegitimate rights and
duties--and so will fail to dominate on a theory like
Richardson's. 



Similarly, Forst measures dominating power against an explicitly
moralized baseline--power dominates to the extent that it is
exercised outside a structure of democratic institutions designed to
secure and respect the equal authority of each citizen to offer and
receive adequate justifications (Forst 2013). Noumenal power within
social relationships becomes domination when agents within that
relationship are denied their right to justification: i.e., their
right to participate as free equals in the space of reasons (2015:
116-117). Interestingly, Forst's theory, like
Blunt's non-moralized theory and unlike Richardson's,
apparently allows for domination outside official structures of
authority. Dominators, Forst says, "seal off" the space of
reasons by denying our right to receive and offer adequate
justifications, but there are many ways to do this. One way is simply
through the threat of violence. If a mob boss has all the guns and
muscle, he will be able to crowd the shop owner completely out of the
justificatory space. What the shop owner might believe about what they
have reason to think and do is irrelevant, given the price they will
pay for non-compliance.



Again, if we understand the power required for domination as a kind of
authority, it makes sense to diagnose the presence or absence of
domination in terms of *illicit* authority. When illicit
normative authority counts as such because it is claimed by a powerful
few, we are pushed firmly in the direction of a reckoning with the
normative authority of all. Of course, once this reckoning has begun,
it is natural to diagnose domination in broadly Kantian terms as the
absence of institutions securing respect for our autonomy. (See Bohman
2004 for a similar approach applied to international relations.)



Norm-dependent or moralized theories identify domination with some
varieties of unrestrained asymmetric power and not others, whether it
be power to dictate the norms of a social relationship, to establish
legitimizing narratives, to alter the shape of our supposed rights and
duties, to close us off from the space of reasons, to violate our
basic interests, or to do us wrong. This makes them more vulnerable to
the possibility that domination can take some form not captured by any
of these specific powers. Lovett--an advocate of a non-moralized,
norm-independent theory--worries that moralized or norm-dependent
theories tend toward a kind of historical or cultural myopia, seeing
domination only in whatever "forms of social power happen to be
the predominant instruments of domination" here and now or in
time gone by (2010: 92). He recommends we see some of the powers
highlighted by moralized or norm-dependent theories as varieties of
domination, but remain alert to other forms it might assume. Of
course, devotees of moralization or norm-dependency may respond that
the leading non-moralized/norm-independent contenders see domination
where there is none, fail to see its specific threat, or cry
"domination" where some other social evil is really the
problem.


## 5. Domination and Applied Ethics



Because power asymmetries persist in other contexts outside the
traditionally political, the idea of domination has been marshaled
beyond political philosophy in applied ethics. Anti-domination
approaches have an ecumenical appeal. Few deny that the paradigms are
examples of injustice; thus, to show that some power structure or use
of power resembles these paradigms goes a long way toward motivating a
verdict against them. Awareness of domination also draws our attention
to the ways moral wrong can be manifest outside the limits of
individual actions. Aside from questions about which individual
actions are wrong, other questions become important. Who is empowered
to act in what ways? How are potential victims empowered to resist?
Who is vulnerable even if not actually victimized? However benevolent,
who makes the rules? Who obeys or refuses to obey, and what does their
compliance (or refusal) cost them? How do the actions of those with
more power construct the space where the less powerful or the
powerless must act? 



Medical care (or the failure to provide it) is rife with potential for
domination. The sick are vulnerable to those who control what they
need to get well (O'Shea 2017, 2018). The disabled choose and
act in a world constructed almost entirely for the benefit of and
controlled by others (De Wispelaere & Casassas 2014). Workers
often have little say in the conditions or culture of their workplaces
(Gourevitch 2011; Breen 2015; Anderson 2017). Migrant and immigrant
populations usually exist in political limbo where they are deeply
vulnerable to exploitation and have no legal standing to contest their
treatment (Honohan 2014; Costa 2016; Sager 2017). The consumption
habits of wealthy nations shape a global environment in which all
humans now and for the foreseeable future will make their choices
(Bohman 2011; Nolt 2011; Smith 2012; Smith 2013; Katz 2017).



Most deployment of anti-domination arguments applies neorepublican
theories of domination, but there are important exceptions. In
addition to the departures from neorepublican accounts noted above in
Friedman's and Kittay's work on caregivers and families,
other attempts to use domination beyond the traditionally political
have yielded revisionary results. For example, Tom O'Shea
worries that the standard neorepublican focus on choice interference,
and the worsening of an agent's choice situation, leaves us
ill-equipped to see the possibility for "assistive arbitrary
power" in medical care. In these cases, the sick may be
vulnerable to domination not because someone acts intentionally to
interfere with their choices--e.g., by raising the price of a
drug beyond what they can afford--but by failing to provide a
benefit, as when no one will provide transportation to someone with
impaired mobility. In a more dramatic departure, Corey Katz argues
that the tendency of mainstream neorepublicanism to ground domination
in social relatedness and the possibility for choice interference
makes it unfit to diagnose the domination of those yet to be born
(2017). If we want to think of intergenerational injustice as a
variety of domination, Katz insists, we must shift to an outcome-based
conception that focuses on unjust harm done to future generations, who
are unable to resist that harm.


## 6. Conclusion



Nothing is less surprising than persistent disagreement in philosophy,
but the persistence of disagreement about domination is connected to
an interesting question about where the discussion should go from
here: What do we want a theory of domination to do? Is our theory of
domination supposed to tell us when people are free and when they are
not? Do we want our theory of domination to give us insight into the
nature of social injustice? To diagnose political misrule? To motivate
a theory of democracy? To describe the underclass in late capitalist
societies? To capture the complaint of racial minorities in oppressive
racialized hierarchies? All of the above? All theories of domination
are not equally suited to each of these tasks; as a consequence, the
appeal of individual theories may differ according to which we find
most pressing.



A related question, at present under-explored in the literature, is
how domination does or does not relate to other concepts often used to
describe power-related injustices: for example, *exploitation*,
*oppression*, and *subjugation*. Young (1990 [2011])
distinguishes between domination and oppression, identifying the
former with asymmetric power over action and the contexts of action,
and the latter with the more diffuse and sometimes unconscious shaping
of institutions in ways that deny some social groups the capacity to
understand and express themselves except from the perspective of the
privileged. Unfortunately, few have followed her in working out a
similar division of labor between these concepts. (For an interesting
exceptions, see Bellamy 2007: 151-152.) More common is the
neorepublican assumption that concern for injustices like oppression
can be folded into concern for domination (Pettit 1997: 80). Just as
all theories of domination are not equally suited to every task we
might put them to, it may be that attention to domination itself
should be supplemented by attention to other varieties of injustice.
If nothing else, recent work on domination has dramatically sharpened
our understanding of such injustice, even if all its varieties cannot
usefully be diagnosed as manifestations of this single ill.