Power to the people: freedom as non-domination, disabling constraints and the eyeball test

Abstract

While there has been a large focus on what it means to be unfree in the neo-Roman republican literature, what it means to be non-free has received much less attention. Prima facie, this should not be surprising. After all, we tend to hold a special place in our normative theorising for the kinds of constraints that come about via the intentional actions of other agents rather than those that come about via the indirect, aggregate action of independently motivated social actors. However, as I argue in this article, if republicans advocate ‘structural egalitarianism’ as Pettit claims, then there are certain disabling constraints – constraints derived solely from being non-free in a choice – that deserve closer attention. Indeed, I claim that in failing to fully appreciate the importance of non-freedom, Pettit’s ‘eyeball test’ – the yardstick for republican justice – leaves in place certain disabling constraints to action which render some citizens structurally unequal vis-à-vis others.