## 1. Political Liberty as Non-Domination



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.


### 1.1 Political Liberty, Positive and Negative



It is notorious that there are several competing conceptions of
political liberty. The now standard account was laid down most
influentially by Isaiah Berlin in his famous lecture on "Two
Concepts of Liberty" (Berlin 1969). According to the first,
'negative' conception of liberty, people are free simply
to the extent that their choices are not interfered with. There are
many variations on this conception, depending on how exactly one wants
to define 'interference', but they all have in common the
basic intuition that to be free is, more or less, to be left alone to
do whatever one chooses. This idea of negative liberty Berlin
associates especially with the classic English political philosophers
Hobbes, Bentham, and J. S. Mill, and it is today probably the dominant
conception of liberty, particularly among contemporary Anglo-American
philosophers. In Mill's well-known words, "the only
freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in
our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs" (1859, 17).



The second, 'positive' conception of liberty is not quite
so easy to define. 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. According to one influential
account, to be free in the positive sense is to be able to act on
one's second-order desires (Frankfurt 1982). 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. H. 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. For the most
part, these stem from the problem that freedom in the positive sense
would seem to license fairly extensive coercion on behalf of
individuals' allegedly 'real' interests--for
example, coercively forcing the gambler to quit on the presumption
that this is, in fact, what he really wants to do even if he
doesn't say so. Regarding this danger, Berlin writes:



> 
> It is one thing to say that I may be coerced for my own good which I
> am too blind to see: this may, on occasion, be for my benefit
> .... [But] it is another to say that if it is my good, then I am
> not being coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not,
> and am free (or 'truly' free) even when my poor earthly
> body and foolish mind bitterly reject it, and struggle against those
> who seek however benevolently to impose it .... (1969, 134)
> 



Liberals like Berlin have thus understandably rejected the
positive and 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.


### 1.2 Liberty as Non-Domination



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*? For
another, consider the slave who, over time, comes to understand his
master's psychological dispositions better and better. Taking
advantage of this improved insight, he manages to keep on his
master's good side, and is consequently interfered with less and
less. Thus, on the non-interference view of liberty, we are committed
to saying that his freedom is increasing over time. Again, while it is
clear that the slave's greater psychological insight improves
his well-being in some respect, do we really want to say that it
increases his *freedom* specifically?



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. We may imagine,
however, that the new government is somewhat more active than its
imperial predecessor, passing laws and instituting policies that
interfere with people's lives to a greater extent than formerly
was the case. 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 pattern on
outcomes. Whether a master chooses to whip his slave on any given day,
we might say, is a contingent outcome: it all depends on the
master's mood, the slave's behavior, and so forth. 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. As the ex-slave
Frederick Douglass said of his former condition, "it was
slavery--not its mere incidents--that I hated" (1855,
161).



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, who has done
more than anyone else to develop this republican conception of freedom
philosophically, puts it thus: a person or group enjoys freedom to the
extent that no other person or group has "the capacity to
interfere in their affairs on an arbitrary basis" (1999, 165;
cf. Pettit 1997, 2001, 2012, 2014). On a plausible rendering of
the term 'domination' as, roughly speaking, arbitrary or
uncontrolled power (see Wartenberg 1990; Pettit 1997, 2012;
Lovett 2010, 2018), we might equivalently say that freedom in the
republican sense consists in the secure enjoyment of non-domination.
This view has since been widely embraced by republican-minded authors
such as Skinner (1998, 2002, 2008), Viroli (2002), Maynor (2003,
2015), Laborde (2008, 2010), Costa (2009, 2013, 2016), Honohan (2013,
2014), Taylor (2017), and O'Shea (2019).


### 1.3 Republican versus Negative Liberty



Notice that the republican view of freedom is, at least in the broad
sense, a negative conception of political liberty. One need not do or
become anything in particular to enjoy political liberty in the
republican sense; one need not exercise self-mastery, on any view of
what that entails, nor succeed in acting on one's second-order
desires (Skinner 1984, 1991, 2002; Spitz 1993). 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.
Thus Joseph Priestley described the lightly-governed American colonies
as nevertheless in a condition of servitude because "by the same
power, by which the people of England can compel them to pay one
penny, they may compel them to pay the last penny they have"
(1769, 140).



Moreover, the republican conception captures in a more intuitively
satisfying way what *would* improve either situation with
respect to political liberty. Most people are not inclined to say that
slaves enjoy increasing freedom just because, with experience, they
improve their insight into their master's psychological
dispositions. But many *would* be inclined to say that their
freedom is enhanced, other things being equal, if some effective
reform in the laws, institutions, or norms sharply reduced their
master's authority over them. (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, in other words, is constituted by rightly-ordered
laws, institutions, and norms: "to enjoy such non-domination,
after all, is just to be in a position where no one can interfere
arbitrarily in your affairs," writes Pettit, "and you are
in that position from the moment that the institutions are in
place" inhibiting possible arbitrary interference (1997, 107).
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 1989,
1997, 2012, 2014; Skinner 1991, 1998; Spitz 1993, 1995; Viroli 2002;
Maynor 2003; Lovett 2022). In the classic expression of James
Harrington, such a community would be an "empire of laws and not
of men" (1656, 8).


## 2. Republican Liberty: Problems and Debates



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.


### 2.1 What about non-interference?



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 (1785), is that talking about non-domination is
really just another (more obscure) way of talking about security of
non-interference (Goodin 2003; Carter 2008; Kramer 2008). Contemporary
civic republicans must reject this view. Pettit (1997, 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. For
example, to have a master with an exceptionally benevolent disposition
is to be reasonably secure in one's expectation that one will
not often be adversely interfered with--but it is to have a
master nonetheless. The republican idea of freedom specifically
instructs us not to make our master a better person (the goal of the
old 'mirror for princes' literature), but to render him
less of a master (Lovett 2012b). This can only be done by curbing
either his arbitrary power or his subjects' dependency on
him.



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. Of course, as a contingent empirical fact, extensive arbitrary
power often brings extensive interferences in train (slave masters and
absolute monarchs just can't help meddling in their
subjects' affairs, we might suppose), so it is understandable
that our distaste for the former should influence our assessment of
the latter. 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 2001; Wall 2001).



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. Something like this approach was initially
taken by Pettit (1997, 74-7): there he distinguished between
factors that "compromise" liberty, and factors that
"condition" it. 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 1998), or we might regard republican liberty as having
greater importance than non-interference, other things equal (Viroli
2002, Pettit 2012). 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 2018). 


### 2.2 What Counts as 'Arbitrary' Power?



A second major difficulty in developing the republican idea of freedom
lies in giving precise meaning to the notion of arbitrariness.
According to what criteria are we to consider power
'arbitrary'? Not simply when its exercise is random or
unpredictable. This view would undermine the whole point of the
republican conception of political liberty. As discussed above, with
long experience a slave is better able to predict his master's
behavior, and so it appears less random to him, but (the civic
republican wants to argue) the slave does not enjoy greater freedom by
that fact alone. Just because one is better able to cope with
arbitrary power, it does not follow that one's domination is any
less.



'Discretionary' is much closer to the relevant meaning of
arbitrary, but it is not quite right either. 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 2010, 2022). 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. 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 2006; Lovett 2016a).



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 (2012, 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 2008; Laborde 2008; Forst 2013; McCammon 2015).



Either way, two caveats are worth noting. The first is that, on either
view, arbitrariness simply means uncontrolled and vice versa.
Pettit's recent preference for the latter term over the former
(e.g., Pettit 2012, 2014) is simply due to its superior clarity, and
represents neither a real change in view nor the addition of a new
condition alongside the old. 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. This
was never Pettit's view, though in earlier work (e.g., Pettit
1997) some passages may have inadvertently suggested otherwise. 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 2001; Costa 2007; Carter
2008).


### 2.3 Republican Freedom and the Human Good



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 2001).



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. Clearly, the introduction of children's rights into
western law was a boon, precisely because it reduced the degree of
arbitrary power to which children are inevitably subject (which is to
say, because it increased their republican freedom). 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 2008). The challenge for
contemporary civic republicans, therefore, is less to show why
non-domination is an important human good (for which there are plenty
of good arguments in the literature: see Pettit 1997; Maynor 2003;
Laborde 2008; Gadeke 2020), but rather to show how it fits into a
broader moral framework, and specifically, the comparative weight we
should assign to republican freedom vis-a-vis other important
goods in the achievement of human flourishing (or, if non-domination
is regarded as a deontological side-constraint, as suggested by Forst
2013, its relative priority vis-a-vis other side-constraints).
Pettit (2005, 2014) 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.


## 3. The Classical Republican Tradition



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.



It is now standard to refer to this as the 'civic
humanist' interpretation of the classical republican tradition,
and it is most commonly associated with the writings of Arendt (1958,
1963), Pocock (1975, 1981), and Rahe (1992). 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.


### 3.1 The Instrumental Turn



Beginning with Skinner (1984), Sunstein (1988), and Pettit (1989), 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. This
instrumental or 'neo-Roman' interpretation of the
tradition was cemented in major contributions by Spitz (1995), Pettit
(1997), Dagger (1997), and Skinner (1998).



There now exists a considerable historiographical literature advancing
this new interpretation, including studies of Machiavelli (Skinner
1983, 1984; Viroli 1998), the seventeenth-century English republicans
(Dzelzainis 1995; Skinner 1998, 2000; Lovett 2005, 2012a, 2020);
Rousseau (Viroli 1998); many Americans of the founding era (Sellers
1994); Wollstonecraft (Coffee 2012; Halldenius 2015); some of the
French revolutionaries (Hammersley (2010); and the
nineteenth-century American labor republicans (Gourevitch 2015). 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 for recreating the experience
of the Greek polis in economically complex mass democracies
characterized by reasonable pluralism (Herzog 1986; Goodin 2003;
Brennan and Lomasky 2006). 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 2013; Lovett and
Whitfield 2016). Thus properly understood, republicanism is fully
"compatible with modern pluralistic forms of society"
(Pettit 1997, 8).


### 3.2 Republicanism and Liberalism



The contemporary civic republican interpretation carries with it what
could be seen as a significant drawback, namely, that it reduces the
distance between classical republicanism and the mainstream liberal
tradition. 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 (Patten 1996; Larmore 2001).
Indeed, at one point in his *Political Liberalism*, Rawls
explicitly states that his theory has "no fundamental
opposition" with a non-perfectionist, instrumental
interpretation of republicanism (1993, 205). What then is the
advantage of civic republicanism over mainstream liberalism (Herzog
1986; Goodin 2003; Brennan and Lomasky 2006)?



The standard reply among contemporary civic republicans is to argue
that there is indeed a connection between republicanism and
liberalism, but that liberalism is "an impoverished or
incoherent republicanism" (Viroli 2002, 61)--a bastard
offshoot, so to speak, of what was originally a considerably more
appealing political philosophy. 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. This is
precisely why many liberal authors took pains to distance themselves
from republicanism in the first place, as they openly admitted:
"those definitions of liberty ought to be rejected, which, by
making that essential to civil freedom which is unattainable in
experience, inflame expectations that can never be gratified,"
observed Paley (1785, 315; cf. Pettit 1997).



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 1997, 2009). On the republican view, by
contrast, public laws or policy interventions need not always count as
reductions in freedom. Provided the law or policy is adopted and
implemented in an appropriately non-arbitrary manner, the
citizens' freedom remains untouched. Indeed, if the law or
policy ameliorates dependency, or curtails the arbitrary powers some
in the community exercise over others, freedom may be enhanced. In the
classical tradition, this idea was often expressed as the claim that,
in the words of Blackstone, "laws, when prudently framed, are by
no means subversive but rather introductive of liberty" and thus
"where there is no law, there is no freedom" (1765, 122).
The grounds for this claim will be explained further below.


## 4. The Contemporary Republican Program



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 2000; Maddox 2002; Goodin 2003; McCormick
2003)?



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. As Arendt writes, it is "the sign of a well-ordered
republic" that only the politically virtuous elite "would
have the right to be heard in the conduct of the business of the
republic" (1963, 279).



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 1997, 2014; Maynor 2003; Gourevitch
2015).



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, bears 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.


### 4.1 Republican Public Policy



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.
Absent this second concern, republican policy would indeed often seem
"indeterminate," as observed by McMahon (2005) and
Costa (2007). 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. In order to enjoy some degree of republican freedom,
therefore, it is absolutely essential to introduce a domestic legal
system so as to govern the citizens' mutual relations (Lovett
2016a). 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 1989, 1997, 2012; Spitz 1995; Viroli 2002;
Dagger 2009).



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. For example, while markets
as such need not involve domination (Pettit 2006), and indeed when
well-ordered might reduce it (Taylor 2017), republicans'
enthusiasm for markets will have definite limits. 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 1993; Pettit 1997; Viroli 2002). 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 2006; Gourevitch 2015; O'Shea 2019).
Ensuring the enjoyment of republican freedom will therefore require
some public provision for otherwise unmet basic needs.



Yet another danger to republican freedom arises in the context of
family life and gender relations. Traditional family law subjected
both wives and children to considerable arbitrary power: circumstances
in the case of the latter, circumscribed opportunities in the case of
the former, ensured the nearly complete dependency of both on the
family they happened to be in. The contemporary civic republican
program is thus congenial to both an expansion of children's
rights, and the elimination of sex domination (Pettit 1997; Phillips
2000; Costa 2013; Halldenius 2015).



It is always important from a civic republican point of view to be on
guard against the introduction of new forms of dependency and
arbitrary power through those very laws and policies designed to
enhance individual freedom, however. In the area of criminal and civil
law, for example, freedom might be threatened by legal uncertainty or
prosecutorial discretion; and, of course, there are grave republican
concerns with respect to the existing system of punishment in many
western nations (Braithwaite and Pettit 1990). These dangers might
suggest the need for a more democratized system of criminal justice
(Marti 2009). Similarly, in the public provision of basic
needs, there are republican concerns with respect to dependence on
government aid and arbitrariness in the distribution of benefits that
might point to the introduction of an unconditional basic income
(Raventos 2007; Lovett 2010; for a contrary view, see Taylor 2017). In
many of these areas, however, there remains considerable work for
contemporary civic republicans in determining the appropriate public
policy implications of a universalized concern for republican
freedom.


### 4.2 Republican Political Institutions



Turning from questions of public policy to the form of government, we
return to issues more familiar to the writers in the classical
tradition. Protecting citizens from the arbitrary or uncontrolled
power of their government through good institutional design represents
perhaps the signature classical republican concern. Many of the
standard devices for achieving this aim--the rule of law, the
separation of powers, federalism, constitutionally entrenched basic
rights, and so on--have been adopted by liberals and others.
Contemporary civic republicans, naturally, remain committed to these
institutional devices in some measure (Pettit 1997, 2012, 2014; Maynor
2003).



However, contemporary civic republicans also recognize that these
sorts of devices can only go so far. The basic reason for this is
that, no matter how carefully designed, the operation and functioning
of government necessarily entails considerable discretion on the part
of public authorities (Pettit 1997; Richardson 2002). There are two
especially prominent instances of this. First, it is clear that no
matter how detailed and carefully-crafted it is, no system of explicit
rules and regulations can possibly cover all contingencies and
circumstances. It follows that discretionary authority must inevitably
be left in the hands of courts, public agencies, and administrative
bureaucracies. Second, even apart from this, there remains extensive
discretion in the hands of legislatures to set public law and policy
in the first place. A daily-changing system of rules is no better than
having no rules at all.  



The standard republican remedy for this problem is enhanced democracy.
It must, however, be democracy of the right sort. Most contemporary
civic republicans reject the populist model of democracy according to
which all public laws and policies must express the collective will of
the people in order to be considered legitimate. Instead, they
generally endorse some form of "qualified populism"
(Richardson 2002) or "contestatory democracy" (Pettit
1997, 1999, 2001; Maynor 2003). Roughly speaking, the idea is that
properly-designed democratic institutions should give citizens the
effective opportunity to contest the decisions of their
representatives. This possibility of contestation will make government
agents wielding discretionary authority answerable to a public
understanding of the goals or ends they are meant to serve and the
means they are permitted to employ. In this way, discretionary power
can be subject to popular control in the sense required for a secure
enjoyment of republican liberty (Pettit 2012, 2014; Ingham 2019).



Next, of course, we will want to know how popular control might
actually be put into practice. The main challenges are commonly
addressed under three headings, outlined by Pettit (1997,
186-7). The first and most thoroughly discussed is the
requirement that discretionary authority be guided by the norm of
deliberative public reasoning. This means that the relevant
decision-makers (legislatures, courts, bureaucrats, etc.) must be
required to present reasons for their decisions, and those reasons
must be subject to open public debate (see Sunstein 1988, 1993; Pettit
1997; Richardson 2002). So, for example, legislative processes should
be designed so as to discourage back-room bargaining on the basis of
sectional interests, and instead to encourage open public
deliberation. Similarly, bureaucratic agencies should not be allowed
to merely issue determinations on the basis of technocratic expertise
without offering reasons for their decisions that are open to public
examination.



The other two requirements have not received as much attention as the
first, perhaps because both are relatively obvious. The second is that
of inclusiveness. Opportunities for democratic contestation must be
equally open to all persons and groups in the society. This
requirement follows naturally from a universalized concern for
republican liberty, and it has implications for the design of
representative institutions, campaign financing, and so on (Pettit
1997, 2012; Bellamy 2007). And the third requirement is that there
exist institutionalized forums for contestation--impartial
'courts of appeal,' so to speak, where citizens can raise
objections to public laws and policies (Pettit 1997, 1999, 2012).
Whether these forums should include constitutional courts with strong
powers of judicial review remains a subject of debate in the
republican literature, however (Bellamy 2007; Honohan 2009; Hickey
2019).


### 4.3 Civic virtue and corruption



Among the more salient themes in the classical republican tradition
are the importance of civic virtue and the dangers of corruption. We
may understand the term 'corruption' simply to mean the
advancement of personal or sectional interest at the expense of the
public good, and 'civic virtue' as its opposite--that
is, a willingness to do one's part in supporting the public
good. Critics of republicanism often fear that this implies extensive
self-sacrifice and frugality, a renunciation of individuality and
self-identification with the community (Herzog 1986; Goodin 2003;
Brennan and Lomasky 2006). These fears are no doubt encouraged by the
civic humanist reading of the classical tradition along perfectionist
lines. Civic republicans accordingly have been at pains to show the
contrary--that civic virtue should be understood as a strictly
instrumental good, useful in establishing and maintaining republican
liberty. Far from calling for the subjection of individual to
collective aims, they argue, republican liberty is desirable in part
because it enables citizens to pursue their private aims with
assurances of security (Skinner 1984, 1991; Spitz 1993; Dagger 1997;
Viroli 2002; Maynor 2003).



Broadly speaking, there are two topics to consider under the heading
of civic virtue. On the one hand, there is the civic virtue and danger
of its corruption on the part of public officials; on the other, there
is the civic virtue and danger of its corruption on the part of
citizens in general. With respect to the former, republicans typically
reject the view (common in the liberal tradition) that public
officials are by nature corrupt, and instead regard individuals as
potentially corruptible, but not necessarily corrupt (Pettit 1997).
Working from this assumption, it is strictly a pragmatic and empirical
question which configurations of public laws, institutions, and norms
are most likely to minimize the danger of corruption, and enhance the
civic virtue of public officials. Options here include screening
procedures on the selection of officials, rules and norms keeping some
policy options out of bounds, and both positive and negative
sanctions. In designing such institutions, it is important not to
assume the worst of people, for otherwise we might inadvertently
encourage (through an evident lack of trust) the very corrupt behavior
one aims to guard against.



Promoting civic virtue on the part of the citizens in general,
however, is just as important from a republican point of view. There
are a variety of possible reasons for this. For the most part, they
stem from the observation that the widespread enjoyment of republican
liberty is most likely to be maximized in a community where the
citizens are committed to that ideal, and each is willing to do his or
her part in realizing it. For example, through collective political
action, citizens can bring instances of domination to public
attention; they can support laws and policies that would expand
republican freedom; and they can do their part in defending republican
institutions when called upon to do so. Promoting this sort of
commitment to republican ideals will require a fairly robust program
of civics education, together with a culture that rewards virtue with
public esteem (Dagger 1997; Pettit 1997; Brennan and Pettit 2003;
Maynor 2003; Costa 2009; Lovett 2020). Again, it should be emphasized
here that citizens do not enjoy republican freedom, on the civic
republican view, in *being* virtuous. Indeed, this could not be
the case since, as argued earlier, the degree of republican freedom
enjoyed is rather a question of how the laws, institutions, and norms
of the community are ordered. Civic virtue is, however,
*instrumentally* useful both in bringing about the right sorts
of laws, institutions, and norms, and in ensuring their durability and
reliability.



Finally, it is worth mentioning the connection between civic virtue
(both on the part of public officials and citizens in general) and the
rule of law. The significance of the rule of law for republican
liberty was discussed above; in the classical republican tradition,
this was expressed as the "empire of law" ideal--the
notion that in a free republic laws, not men, rule. Of course this
cannot ever be literally true, but it can be approximated in a sort of
artificial way, so that life can be experienced *as if* it were
true within a given community. This requires, however, that the law be
widely regarded as clear, predictable, and legitimate, and this in
turn is possible only when there is a generally high level of
compliance and when legal rules are embedded in a shared network of
informal social norms (Pettit 1997; Lovett 2016a).


### 4.4 Republicanism Across Borders



The classical republicans were fond of extolling the martial valor of
Rome and other ancient republics, and they often followed Machiavelli
in advocating policies and institutions that would enhance the
expansionist capacities of republics. For this they have often been
accused of militaristic and imperialistic tendencies (see for example
Goodin 2003), but this is not entirely fair. One has to be mindful of
the dangerous security environments republics have often faced. The
classical republicans rarely advocated conquest for its own sake:
"swords were given to men," writes Sidney, "that
none might be slaves," not that they might enslave others (1698,
343). In a hostile world populated by autocratic rivals, Machiavelli
may have been right to believe that a republic's best defence is
a good offense.



Even so, the classical republicans were sensitive to the particular
dangers of territorial expansion. They especially worried that by
upsetting the domestic balance of wealth and power, imperial conquest
would undermine freedom at home, and accordingly they sought remedies
through various cooperative and federal arrangements (Deudney 2007;
Bohman 2008). Whether optimally securing republican freedom under
modern conditions will ultimately require some sort of global
republic, however, remains a topic of debate (see Pettit 2010;
Marti 2010; Maynor 2015).



Beyond narrow security concerns, however, contemporary civic
republicans have recently begun to explore the implications of
republican freedom for global economic justice. Supposing the ideal is
suitably universalized, and thus every human being's
non-domination counts the same, are republicans committed to
cosmopolitan policies of global redistribution? Here a wide range of
views can be found in the literature. Pettit (2010, 2014) argues no,
on the grounds that economic justice is mainly important indirectly
for preserving domestic republican institutions, whereas Lovett
(2016b) argues yes, on the grounds that poverty and severe inequality
directly expose individuals to domination. In between these positions,
Laborde (2010), and Laborde and Ronzoni (2016) maintain that our
global obligations to promote non-domination are similar but
ultimately weaker than our domestic ones. Finally, Bachvarova (2013)
suggests that republicanism is best suited to address relational
rather than distributive global justice.



Perhaps the greatest challenge to contemporary civic republican
theory, however, is the problem of state borders and global migration.
Republicans are in a strong position to advocate for stateless
persons, refugees, and resident non-citizens who, in various ways, are
clearly vulnerable to avoidable domination (Bohman 2009; Benton 2010).
Much less obvious, however, is how to address the issue of
international freedom of movement. Traditionally committed to a strong
conception of citizenship, the republican ideal of political liberty
has often seemed inseparable from the existence of bounded communities
of fellow free citizens. Pettit (2012, 161-2) claims that since
states have no choice but to maintain borders, the existence of
migration controls as such cannot count as dominating, while Costa
(2016) disagrees. Honohan (2014) insists that any migration controls a
given state does implement should be non-arbitrary, but as Fine (2014)
observes, this does not settle the ultimate question of whether
freedom of movement can be reconciled with the need to maintain civic
community.


## 5. Conclusion



In many respects, civic republicanism remains a still underdeveloped
political doctrine. Further work is required in all the areas
discussed above, and there are many issues central to the concerns of
contemporary political theorists and philosophers that contemporary
civic republicans have only recently begun to examine. Among the
latter, there are now at least initial treatments of multiculturalism
(Laborde 2008; Lovett 2010; Honohan 2013; Bachvarova 2014), education
policy (Peterson 2011; Hinchliffe 2014; Macleod 2015), and
intergenerational justice (Beckman 2016; Katz 2017; Pinto 2019),
although substantial work certainly remains to be done. Nevertheless,
civic republicanism is a dynamic and growing field, which stands to
make continuing positive contributions to debate in contemporary
social and political theory.