Republican Political Theory Research Articles

Must We Choose between Democracy and Music? On a Curious Silence in Tocqueville's Democracy in America

Summary‘Among the fine arts, I clearly see something to say only about architecture, sculpture, painting. As for music, dance […], I see nothing’. Tocqueville's observation in the Rubish for the second volume of Democracy in America is not only startling, but theoretically important: it ratifies the liberal (and nowadays oft-assumed) separation between musical life and political constitution. This, however, should give us cause to wonder. While in America, Tocqueville and Beaumont had multiple occasions to hear music in public festivals and private spaces. Though other European and highbrow observers also declared American music to be ‘in its infancy’, music nonetheless played a significant part in antebellum social and political life. Nor was Tocqueville insensitive to sound in his relation to others. Indeed, Tocqueville perhaps saw in the demise of music as the art of ‘making harmony’ a symptom of the democratic era. However, like Montesquieu, Tocqueville refused to consider music a constitutive principle of democratic regimes—including in the context of Ancient Greek political theory. In doing so, Tocqueville sharply dissociated himself from republican political theory, but failed to raise the question of music's contribution to the culture and exercise of freedom in the modern era.

Friedrich Schiller on republican virtue and the tragic exemplar

Scholars have recently argued that Friedrich Schiller makes a signal contribution to republican political theory in his view of “aesthetic education,” which offers a means of elevating self-interest to virtue. However, though this education is lauded in theory, it has been denigrated as implausible, irresponsible, or dangerous in practice. This paper argues that the criticisms rest on a faulty assumption that artistic objects constitute the sole substance of this “aesthetic education.” Through a reading of Schiller’s work throughout the 1790s, I make the case that this “education” occurs also through an encounter with the “moral beauty” of individual exemplars. This interpretation fits with Schiller’s republican allegiances, saves Schiller’s project from political irrelevance, and enriches Schiller’s contribution to contemporary republican political theory. However, I argue that Schiller was attentive to the dangers of this “aesthetic education” in his play Wallenstein, in which Schiller dramatizes the tragic relationship between individual exemplar and political order.

An Apprenticeship for Life in Common: Jean Jaurès on Social Democracy and the Modern Republic

The standard story of republican thought stops around the end of the eighteenth century, and contemporary republican political theory based on that story—for example, the work of Philip Pettit—is ill-equipped to confront problems that have appeared in the era of capitalism. Republican theory can benefit from attention to the emergence of social democracy in the early twentieth century, and to the role of republican ideas in that emergence. Jean Jaurès, perhaps the most prominent exponent of social democracy at that time, drew on the republican tradition to defend a concept of justice that combines commitment to non-domination with worry about modern loneliness, and he derived from the republican tradition a defense of reformist political methods against their revolutionary critics. He suggests the usefulness of left political thought to republicanism, and of republicanism to thinkers on the left.

The Grammar of Republican Political Theory: A Critical Discussion of Arendt and Habermas

In my PhD thesis, I argue that current concepts of republicanism fail to fully incorporate a political conception of freedom as well as the dialectic relationship between politicization and depoliticization. Against this, I suggest an Arendtian conception of republicanism that relies on (1) non-domination as non-rule and a conception of active citizens, (2) plurality and the (3) equal right to common membership. In the end, I argue that Arendt’s theory should be amended by a theory of the socially aware constitutional state, derived from Habermas’ legal theory.

Challenging Power Politics in the politeia Republicanism

In the article the author discusses the emergence and the disappearance of early connection between the strong republican aversion to power politics and the consequential anti-imperialism (which was oriented against authoritarian supranational formations ranging from Athenian hegemony to the Roman Empire). First impulses towards shaping a republican political theory (by Athenian philosophers in the 4th […]

Should Republican Liberty as Non-Domination Be Outsourced?

Politics, along with economic and cultural ideals and institutions, seem no longer bound by the traditional borders of the nation-state. As a result, many individuals have become increasingly exposed to forms of interference and potential instances of domination that arise from sources both of domestic and foreign origin, but which they have no capability to counter. In response to this challenge, many republican writers have turned to cosmopolitan thinking to chart a way forward. These moves, however, cut against conventional wisdom that holds that since republicanism is primarily rooted in the past and tied to the existence of classical notions of sovereignty, construction of a contemporary and relevant version of it in this way of thinking may prove difficult. This raises two related questions. First, is it really possible to detach republican ideals and institutions from the nation-state and think of them in a global context? If it is possible, then the second question focuses on whether or not moving to a more globally oriented republican political theory is an attractive and positive move forward and one likely to result in a decrease in the amount of arbitrary interference an individual experiences? In critically engaging with these two questions, I will argue that while it might be possible to develop and extend republicanism in a cosmopolitan direction, at least presently it may be prove to be counter-productive. This is because by vesting republicanism’s central concern with minimizing domination in a world republic or in some kind of transnational political institution(s), arbitrary interference may well increase due to the difficulties in controlling and checking the power of these kinds of agencies. Instead, I argue that to better guard against arbitrary interference, democratic citizens must first be able to utilize the institutional and political mechanisms closest to them – those found within their nation-state – to fight back against domination. To be sure, I do not argue that real and meaningful republican cosmopolitan transnational political institutions cannot ever develop or that we should necessarily dismiss them because they have not developed yet. Rather my argument is that before we outsource the task of minimizing domination to transnational institutions that reside far from the everyday lives of individuals, we must not forget that currently the only place where genuine democracy takes place is at the nation-state level. Thus, republicans must first continue to argue for the development of properly constituted institutions and ideals that serve the cause of republican liberty in a domestic political context while finding a way to extend these into transnational institutions before we can hope that domination of any origin will be effectively minimized.

Crime, Freedom and Civic Bonds: Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy

There is no question Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom is an engaging and powerful book which will inform legal philosophy, particularly Kantian theories, for years to come. The text explores with care Kant’s legal and political philosophy, distinguishing it from his better known moral theory. Nor is Ripstein’s book simply a recounting of Kant’s legal and political theory. Ripstein develops Kant’s views in his own unique vision illustrating fresh ways of viewing the entire Kantian project. But the same strength and coherence which ties the book to Kant’s important values of independence blinds the work to our shared moral ties grounded in other political values. Ripstein’s thoughts on punishment are novel in that he embeds criminal law, both in its retributivist and consequentialist facets, into Kant’s overarching political philosophy to show how criminal law can be seen as one aspect of the supremacy of public law. But a criminal law solely focused on the preservation of freedom takes little notice of the ways criminal law need expand its view to account for how a polity can restore the victim of a crime back to civic equality, reincorporate offenders after they have been punished and cannot leave past offenders isolated and likely to reoffend, resulting in the rotating door prison system and communities of innocents who remain preyed upon by career criminals. Lastly, a political theory that does not prize our civic bonds will ignore the startling balkanization of our criminal punishment practices, where policing, arresting and imprisonment become tools of racial and social oppression. In illustrating the benefits in viewing criminal law as a coherent part of Kant’s political theory of freedom, Ripstein also highlights what is absent. It then becomes clear that though Kant presents one important facet of punishment, only a republican political theory can meet the most pressing moral demands of punishment by reminding us that criminal law must be used to preserve and strengthen civic society.

Learning by Doing: Two Republican Approaches to Teaching Political Theory

In this paper I detail two assignments that I have used to teach political theory outside of the classroom, so to speak. The first I call the Political Participation Project, the second the Historical Research Assignment. Both assignments are designed to give students experience outside the classroom that they can then bring back in to reflexively judge the presentation of categories in class. Practical experience, or more frequently, prudence in republican political theory is a central category with a history running from the ancients to the moderns and includes Aristotle and Tacitus as much as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Tocqueville. Using the category of prudence, republicans claim that politics is an art that is learned only by doing. What I mean is that republicans resist the general attitude that if we can just get the ideas right then the politics will come along. These two assignments ask students to put the practice of politics and political theory first, and to let the philosophy follow behind.

Republican continuities in the Vienna Order and the German Confederation (1815–66)

This article argues that the German Confederation — deutscher Bund — (1815–66)was a form of rule built on early modern republican political theory. It was a ‘Compound Republic’ form of rule constructed to prevent the emergence of a system of sovereign German states as well as a single sovereign German state. Its purpose was maintaining peace and stability in Europe and safeguarding the autonomy of its member polities. Contemporary statesmen, intellectuals and scholars saw these purposes as complementary. A non-sovereign, polycentric and republican organization of the German lands was regarded as a natural and necessary component in a stable Europe free from war and revolutions. This article analyses the origins, institutions and policies of the German Confederation, with particular regard to how the means of organized violence were organized. It thereby demonstrates the implementation of republican ideas and purposes in the Bund. The article situates the Bund in 19th-century thinking about European stability and sovereignty, further demonstrating the prevalence of republican ideas on international order. Republican political theories and institutions differed sharply from modern theories and models of international relations. Consequently, the history of international politics, the European system of states and state-formation must be re-conceptualized more in line with historical realities.

The Republican critique of capitalism

Although republican political theory has undergone something of a revival in recent years, some question its contemporary relevance on the grounds that republicanism has little to say about central questions of modern economic organization. In response, this paper offers an account of core republican values and then considers how capitalism stands in relation to these values. It identifies three areas of republican concern related to: the impact of unequal wealth distribution on personal liberty; the impact of the private control of investment on popular sovereignty and pursuit of the common good; and the impact of capitalism on the level and quality of political participation. In view of these concerns, we can see some of the likely requirements of a distinctively republican, but contemporary political economy.

Making Power Speak: The Power of Freedom of Information from a Practitioner’s View

This paper explores the idea of accountability from the view of a practitioner within the United Kingdom Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Privacy and openness intersect with accountability for local government within the central government’s transparency agenda. The underlying belief is that increased openness will lead to increased accountability. Yet, in many cases, organisations are opaque to themselves and the public. In that sense, the FOIA has only created a pinhole to view inside the organisation. What the transparency agenda may yet do is open up the blinds. I argue that accountability depends much on organisational culture as it does the wider political culture. In that sense, access to information may not lead to greater accountability because the public are excluded from the political process. I explore this idea through the duality of public and private within republican political theory and suggest that active citizenship is required for transparency to create accountability, which is lacking within a constitutional monarchy.The main theme is explored through three questions. How uncertainty over information rights undermines accountability. For example, applicants unaware of their rights lack the skill and knowledge to appeal or challenge an authority. How the dialectic of disclosure plays out when one has to balance the legislation between an organisational privacy and public accountability. For example, practitioners have to balance the privacy against accountability because what may have once been accessible may now be classified as private. The privacy rights of organisations, as a human right, heighten that tension. [See Veolia v Nottinghamshire CC [2010] EWCA 1214] Finally, how organisational silence can delay and thereby deny accountability. For example, the discourse of accountability assumes that transparency leads to trust. Yet, accountability based upon transparency carried out opaquely undermines that trust.

The common good and citizenship education in England: a moral enterprise?

The notion of the common good has been cited as a key constituent of citizenship education in England, within which the development of a concern for the common good represents a key disposition. The term has, however, received little critical attention to date within the discourse of the subject, either in terms of its theoretical basis or its educational function and form. For this reason to develop the common good represents an ill‐defined aim of the citizenship education in schools. This article seeks to redress this by critically engaging with different formulations of the common good within recent civic republican political theory. More specifically, it attempts to delineate between notions of the common good that are essentially moral and notions that emphasise political understandings of the term, and which, in so doing, minimise the moral. On the basis of this exploration a number of issues are raised for citizenship education in England and it is suggested that to fail to view the common good as a moral enterprise is inherently problematic.

The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution by Dan Edelstein

the ministries. The veto proposal had produced extensive debate, with the more radical members opposing any veto by the King. Rather than interpreting the result as a compromise, Shapiro sees it as a further step of alienation between the Assembly and the monarch. The exclusion of the deputies from the ministries drastically reduced communication between the legislative and executive powers. Shapiro concludes that these and other enactments were heavily influenced by the deputies’ growing mistrust of the King resulting from the trauma they had experienced. Unaware that the balance of power had shifted in their favor, they could no longer reach any accommodation with the Crown. Shapiro’s interdisciplinary analysis opens new perspectives. He notes that the same momentum is observable in modern-day revolutions, thus lending credence to his thesis. He has an impressive bibliography, and uses letters, memoirs, and archival material extensively. While most of the material quoted is in English, he has faithfully consulted relevant French sources. His work is readable and persuasive , and hopefully will join the recent scholarship on the French Revolution. Chestnut Hill College (PA) Mary Helen Kashuba EDELSTEIN, DAN. The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2009. ISBN 978-0-2261-8438-8. Pp. 337. $40. A glance at the informative table of contents enticed this reviewer to read with a curious mind this careful study of the ideological foundation of the reign of Terror, and the exercise turned out to be rewarding, not in the least for its copious footnotes with their instructive bibliographical references. Edelstein’s introduction is a helpful guide to the main parts and a prologue examines the pre-seventeenth-century developments of the myth of the Golden Age as well as that of the concept of “enemy of the mankind,” both of which underpin the natural republic of the government by the Committee of Public Safety (1792–94). In Part I, Edelstein provides a survey of republican political theory with lengthy summaries of such imaginary republics as found in Fénelon’s Télémaque and Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes. He traces the transformation of the mythical “Golden Age,” in which people lived in natural harmony under the guidance of patriarchs, into a quasi historical reality that could serve as model for a republican government that legislated in accordance with natural law. After all, people were not naturally good and, as Locke said, were corrupted by “vain ambition” and “evil concupiscence” (86) to act contrary to natural law. Thus they could be treated as “enemies of human race.” Pertinent to Edelstein’s thesis is the discussion of Rousseau’s attempt “to resolve the contradictions [in society] through a dialectical synthesis of natural right and republican good,”(85) from which his readers took away the notion that nature and nation were identical and the lawgiver could only make positive law. As argued by the Physiocrats, for example in the words of Le Mercier, these laws were “to conform perfectly to the natural and essential order of societies,” and it was “absolutely necessary that full authority be granted to these [natural] laws.” If enforcement depended on the arbitrary will of the lawgiver, “they would cease to be laws.”(105) Thus there would be no place for Louis XVI’s “c’est légal parce que je le veux” (119). Reviews 837 Part II, comprising chapters 3-5, examines the history of the Republic of Nature (1792-94), during which the Constitution was suspended and the country was in fact governed by the Committee of Public Safety. The “reign of terror” was initiated by the hors-la-loi and other decrees of March–April 1793 which were, according to the author, the logical outcome of the “natural republican” ideology espoused by the Jacobins and their adherents. Edelstein is fully aware that previous scholars such as Patrice Gueniffey or Arno Mayer favored a different interpretation, Mayer writing that ideology “is a poor guide to a revolution’s genesis” (143). Edelstein cites Robespierre’s exhortation to the troops departing to suppress the Vendéen uprising to show that the terror was “not simply the product of a counterrevolutionary/revolutionary dialectic of violence ” but...

Polybius’ Advice to the Imperial Republic

Polybius’ Histories , written in the mid—second century BC, offers an authoritative account of Rome’s rise to uncontested imperial supremacy. The work has been highly influential among political thinkers because of its theory of the “mixed constitution.” This essay proposes to return Polybius’ mixed constitution to its proper location within the narrative of the Histories. This interpretative approach enables us to appreciate Polybius’ frequently neglected emphasis on the connections between republican politics and Roman imperial power. These connections shed light on recent developments in republican political theory. They also lead to an investigation of the didactic purposes of the author, who intended to educate the Roman aristocracy in the virtues necessary for exercising hegemonic power successfully in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Rousseau, Pufendorf and the eighteenth-century natural law tradition

The relationship between the political theory of Rousseau and modern natural law continues to be the subject of debate, both with regard to Rousseau's faithfulness to the idea of natural law itself and regarding the precise extent of the debt he owed to his predecessors. In this article the author re-examines this relationship by focusing attention on what has been defined as the protestant tradition of natural law. In particular she concentrates on the political and theoretical exercise that Jean Barbeyrac had sought to perform by constructing a particular version of this tradition, namely that of using the science of natural law to promote a policy of tolerance between protestants and to justify the right of citizens to resist catholic sovereigns who denied them religious freedom, as well as the right of protestant countries to come to the aid of persecuted fellow believers. The thesis asserts that Rousseau was fully aware of this exercise, just as he was aware that some of Barbeyrac's ideas had been adopted and reworked by another illustrious Genevan, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, a member of the Small Council, to support anti-populist and antidemocratic politics in Geneva. Viewed in this way it is possible to perceive in Rousseau's political thought not so much a “first crisis” of natural law as an intention to reformulate this science from a republican perspective in order to derive rigorous principles of political law from it. And in developing his republican political theory Rousseau took up and overturned the analysis of democratic sovereignty carried out by Pufendorf, who in opposing the “pro-monarchist” excesses of authors such as Hobbes and Horn had unhesitatingly demonstrated the complete validity of democratic sovereignty.

On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory

All the contributors to this symposium have their own particular thesis to defend, but they are united at the same time by their concern with a single overarching theme. They are all interested in extending what they describe as a ‘republican’ view of freedom and equality to encompass broader questions about human rights and the proper relations between states. I mainly want to comment on this attempt to expand the reach of republican political thought. But I also want to focus – more explicitly than any of our symposiasts have done – on the intellectual traditions from which they draw their sustenance, thereby seeking to illuminate what it might mean to describe their shared outlook as republican in provenance. Suppose we begin by recalling some of the classic statements of republican political theory from the heyday of the tradition in early-modern Europe. Consider, for example, Niccolo Machiavelli’s Discorsi, written in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Florentine republic in 1512. Or consider some of the English writers most heavily indebted to Machiavelli, such as James Harrington in his Oceana of 1656, or Algernon Sydney in his Discourses on Government of 1694, or such later theorists as Richard Price in his Observations on Civil Liberty of 1776. It would not, I think, be too much of an oversimplification to say that the common features of the republicanism espoused by all these writers arose out of two basic commitments. Furthermore, as the republican tradition developed, these underlying principles came to be summarized in the form of two slogans, as I shall call them, that may almost be said to define the republican case. It is with these slogans and their implications that I shall mainly be concerned in what follows.

The ‘Republican Dilemma’ and the Changing Social Context of Republicanism in the Early Modern Period

This article relates the evolving relationship between republicanism and the problem of ‘empire’ to the changing social contexts within which republican political theory emerges in the early modern period. It is argued that the initial antagonism between republicanism and empire was a politically constituted dilemma that related to the specific configuration of economic and political power characteristic of pre-capitalist societies. With the development of capitalism in England in the early modern period, the problem of empire becomes partially resolved due to the way in which the separation of economic and political power under capitalism reconstitutes the nature of empire itself. This new social context — characterized by new social, economic and political relationships specific to an emerging capitalist context — laid the foundations for the resolution of the ‘republican dilemma’ of empire and the ideological establishment of the first ‘Republican Empire’ in 18th century America.

Constitutional Referendums: A Theoretical Enquiry

In recent decades the use of referendums to settle major constitutional questions has increased dramatically. Addressing this phenomenon as a case study in the relationship between democracy and constitutional sovereignty, this article has two aims. The first is to argue that these constitutional referendums are categorically different from ordinary, legislative referendums, and that this has important implications for theories of constitutional sovereignty. Secondly, the article suggests that the power of these constitutional referendums to re‐order sovereign relations raises significant normative questions surrounding the appropriateness of their use. The article engages with these normative questions, enquiring whether the recent turn in republican political theory towards deliberative democracy may offer a model through which sufficiently democratic referendum processes can be constructed.

The Incompleteness of ‘Punishment as Fair Play’: A Response to Dagger

Richard Dagger (in this issue) provides perhaps the most persuasive version of a ‘fair play’ theory of criminal punishment, grounded in an attractive liberal republican political theory. But, I argue, his version of the theory still faces serious objections: that its explanation of why some central mala in se are properly criminalised is still distorting, despite his appeal to the burdens of ‘general compliance’; and that it cannot adequately explain (as it should explain) the differential seriousness and wrongfulness of different kinds of crime.

The Republican State and Global Environmental Governance

�� ��� The question of what forms of governance are required to address global forms of ecological degradation has risen in profile over the course of the last decade. However, there has been a tendency in this literature to emphasise the significance of global environmental governance—the international environmental regimes and treaties, and global forms of governance relating to the environment—without examining of the role of the state in this configuration. The potential role of the state within global environmental governance has been largely downplayed, except for a few notable exceptions. 1 This article will argue that deeper thought needs to be given to the potential role of the state in addressing environmental degradation and impending environmental harm. However, it is not sufficient to merely argue that the power of the state must be brought to bear on environmental issues and neither is it useful to argue that the state is a replacement for effective global environmental governance. In what follows I will contend that the primary reason we need to emphasize the role of the state in addressing global environmental issues is because of the state’s ability to draw their public into the governance of global environmental problems and thereby strengthen global environmental governance. Underpinning this account is neo-roman republican political theory. In contrast to many strands of liberal and cosmopolitan thought, republican thought emphasizes the importance of the state, constitutional frameworks and the role of citizens in addressing social problems. I contend that republican principles and institutions could develop a strong rationale that enables the state and citizens to politically interface with global governance to more consistently address global problems such as environmental degradation. As a prospective approach to governance, republicanism seeks to reclaim the state as an agent of public interests in order to fashion a liberty against powerful private interests that in a liberal world are allowed to create conditions of subordination and vulnerability. This essay contends that this promotion of liberty will necessarily have to consider global ecological forms of domination if it is to be at all reasonable. This argument develops in three steps. First, I relate the nature of republican thought to ecological degradation, then I examine the main elements of a republican engagement with environmental issues, and lastly, outline how republican citizens could interact with global environmental governance.