Republican Tradition Research Articles

Hannah Arendt, 1906–1975

AbstractThis essay provides an overview of the life and theoretical concerns of Hannah Arendt. It traces the way her experience as a German Jew in the 1930s informed her analysis of totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism and her idea of the “banality of evil” in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The essay takes issue with those of Arendt's critics who detect a lack of “love of the Jewish people” in her writing. It also traces the way Arendt's encounter with totalitarian evil led to a deeper questioning of the anti-democratic impulses in the Western tradition of political thought—a questioning that finds its fullest articulation in The Human Condition and On Revolution. Throughout, my concern is to highlight Arendt's contribution to thinking “the political” in a way friendly to the basic phenomenon of human plurality. I also highlight her recovery and extension of the main themes of the civic republican tradition.

Humour in the Prison: Brendan Behan Confesses

The essay explores the comical aspects of Behan’s autobiographical writings. It focuses on how humour, especially black humour, often flourishes wherever we find conflicts and contrasts. Humour is always born out of oppositions, and it can be argued that it always functions as an act of resistance to outside tragedy. Brendan Behan, a writer of slum and working class background, is one of the leading Irish prison writers. He is in many ways an exponent of an Irish republican tradition based on the idea of prison endurance. Given Behan’s notoriously flamboyant personality and his own talking gifts, it is not hard to imagine that the worst aspect of prison confinement might have been for him compulsory solitude and silence. His exuberant language and larger-than-life personality can be considered perhaps as a reaction to such partial deprivation of interpersonal relationships during his youth. In this context, where fictional and autobiographical truth are kept apart by an unstable divide increased by the abundance of comical interludes and jokes, the core of the essay analyses the second chapter of Confessions of an Irish Rebel in order to discuss the way in which Behan alternates funny accounts and tragedy in his own autobiographical reports.

Republicanism: An Unattractive Version of Liberalism

Philip Pettit is the most important contemporany advocate of the republican tradition in political philosophy. He advances a concept of freedom as non-domination, and constrasts it with the liberal conception of freedom as non-interference. He claims that two features distinguish domination from interference: (1) The capacity of interference ( as opposed to actual interference), and (2) the fact that the interference is arbitrary. I shall argue that Pettit´s republicanism is not sufficiently differente from liberalism, certainly not from John Rawls´s liberalism. The only relevant difference between republicanism and liberalism is related to (2): the notion of arbitrariness. Yet this difference makes republicanism an unattractive version of liberalism, insofar as it, paradoxically, allows for republicanism to legitimize a grave form of domination, paternalism, and, in general, domination coming from the state. This problem gets exacerbated by Pettit´s consequentialist framework.

Bringing republican ideas back home. The Dewey–Laski connection

This article explores J.G.A. Pocock’s insight that “traces” of civic republican discourse survived within the dominant liberal paradigm of modern political thought. It does so by tracking classical republican themes in the works of American pragmatist John Dewey and English pluralist Harold Laski. The main contribution of the article is to show that the 1920s pluralist theory of the state can be interpreted as a reformulation of the classical republican critique of modern liberal conceptions of state sovereignty. In particular, I suggest that Laski can be viewed as a kind of republican pluralist inspired by Aristotle and Harrington as well as by American pragmatism, itself a late outgrowth of the republican tradition in US history.

The Fifth Republic at Fifty: The Changing Face of French Politics and Political Economy

At its inception, a time of great political upheaval in France, it was uncertain whether the new regime would last five years, let alone fifty. The longevity of the regime is due in part to its flexibility and adaptability, which is a theme explored both below and in all of the contributions to this special issue. To set the scene, this will briefly elucidate some of the elements of the constitutional settlement of 1958 which have had an important bearing on its subsequent evolution. The rich and varied texture of French Republicanism makes it in one commentator’s eyes at once ‘the least precise and most evoked concept in the French political lexicon’ (Hayward 2007: 343). The Fifth Republic’s institutions and practices bore the imprint of a diverse amalgam of constitutional norms and political practices, each relating to the French Republican tradition; Rousseauian notions of general will, plebiscitary Bonapartism, parliamentarism, Jacobinism, dirigisme and Republican notions of universalism and egalitarianism. This special issue explores some of the interesting patterns and dynamics of change and continuity in relation to each of these aspects of the French Republic tradition over the last 50 years. As is fitting on such an anniversary, each contribution will offer a brief historical overview of the issue area and to look at the similarities and differences between the contemporary period and 50 years ago.

Yamata Kiku and the representation of a gendered Japanese cultural identity

The Franco-Japanese writer Yamata Kiku (1897–1975) lived in Paris during the 1920s, 1930s and again after the war, writing solely about Japanese culture and predominantly about Japanese women. She was received and indeed styled herself as la japonaise for Parisian literary circles and met with great success, championed by the likes of Valéry, Colette and later Henry Miller. This article examines Yamata's status as a woman who capitalized on the racial and cultural imperatives of her time in France and Japan to present herself variously, both in Orientalist mode and in the tradition of French enlightened republicanism. It questions whether Yamata's works subvert the hegemonic reification of Japanese culture or whether they confirm the Madame Chrysanthemum myth. By analysing changes in her mode of self-representation, it reveals a nexus of gender and racial stereotypes, which has been little explored in the Franco-Japanese context and which challenges the common assumption of the subversive nature of cultural hybridity. Finally, it explores what recent studies of Yamata, together with the 1998 decision by her original publisher Stock to reprint her earlier works, can tell us about the (post-)Orientalist discourse in France today.

The Strange Career of British Democracy: John Milton to Gordon Brown

Political debate in modern Britain has been structured by four narratives or traditions, called here ‘Whig imperialist’, ‘Tory nationalist’, ‘democratic collectivist’ and ‘democratic republican’. The Whig imperialist tradition goes back to Edmund Burke; it is a tradition of responsive evolution, flexible statecraft, genial optimism and abhorrence of dogmatic absolutes. It prevailed for most of the nineteenth century, for most of the interwar period and for most of the 1950s and early‐1960s. Its Tory nationalist counterpart is tense, rebarbative and often shrill. At its core lies a primal fear of the dissolution of authority and a collapse of the social order. Its most notable exponents include Lord Salisbury, Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher. The democratic collectivist tradition stresses ineluctable progress towards a just and rational society, to be achieved by a strong, essentially technocratic central state, with the power and will to replace the wasteful, unjust chaos of the market place by planned co‐ordination. Formative influences on it were the great Fabian socialists, George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb; it achieved its apotheosis under the Attlee Government of 1945‐51. The democratic republican tradition is much more inchoate: its exponents have been the awkward squad of British democracy. The most glittering stars in the democratic republican firmament were probably John Milton, John Stuart Mill and R.H. Tawney. It stresses active self‐government and republican self respect, embodied in a vigorous civil society and strong local authorities. During the ninety‐odd years since Britain belatedly acquired a more‐or‐less democratic suffrage, the first three traditions have all been tested, almost to destruction. But though the fourth has had great influence on social movements of all kinds, governments at the centre have done little more than toy with it, usually for brief periods. The great question now is whether Britain is about to experience a democratic republican moment.

Single Combat and the Aeneid

This paper explores the significance of key martial scenes depicted in the latter books of the Aeneid by examining connections between the republican tradition of monomachy, the impact of Augustus’s sweeping reforms, and the probable meaning of Vergil’s single-combat depictions. In concentrating upon the sacral dimension of these connections, it is argued that Vergil sought to convey a sense of the religious (and socio-political) chaos of his era through an enigmatic treatment of the spolia opima tradition.

The Soul of Socialism: Christianity, Civilization, and Citizenship in the Thought of Eugene Debs

Eugene Debs underwent a transformation over the course of his life that compelled him to replace a brand of unionism rooted in nationalism with a variant of socialism based on internationalism. As a trade and industrial unionist, Debs employed American political traditions linked to citizenship to attack the inequality and injustice engendered by corporations. After he became a socialist, however, Debs seriously questioned the values of citizenship and the heritage of the American Revolution, ultimately transcending the ideological framework he had utilized as a unionist. Previous historians have missed this shift in Debs's thought because they have presented his Christianity as an extension of his preoccupation with citizenship and the American Revolution. Debs emerged from a republican tradition, but his concern with the fate of humanity led him to substitute his earlier focus on American citizenship with the interests of a worldwide civilization. This process of growth caused Debs to elevate socialism in order to denigrate capitalism, exchange the particular virtues of independence and liberty for the universal values of interdependence and brotherhood, and swap the founding fathers and their revolution for Jesus and his revolutionary gospel. In the end, Debs was more concerned with perfecting the internationalist goals of civilization than the nationalist values of citizenship, and he believed that the perfection of humanity endorsed by Christianity was also the overarching goal of socialism.

Recent Journal Articles

Recent Journal Articles Wendy A. Swik U.S. Military Academy Library The bibliography is compiled by the systematic search of approximately four hundred periodicals, a check of several general journal bibliographies, and the welcomed contribution of interested subscribers. Many times older citations will be included simply because the compiler had not come across them earlier or, more frequently, because the periodicals are behind publication schedule. Those wishing to be assured of having their articles listed in this section are urged to notify the compiler. References should include the following: author(s), full title (including subtitle), name of periodical, volume number, issue date, and pagination. Address all contributions to Wendy Swik, Military Affairs Librarian, U.S.M.A. Library, West Point, NY 10996–1799. General Military Affairs Meilinger, Phillip S. "Busting the icon: restoring balance to the influence of Clausewitz." Strategic Studies Quarterly 1 (Fall 2007): 116-145. Reid, Richard J. "Revisiting primitive war: perceptions of violence and race in history." War & Society 26 (October 2007): 1-25. Stone, John. "Clausewitz's trinity and contemporary conflict." Civil Wars 9 (September 2007): 282-296. Ancient and Medieval Warfare Hanson, Victor Davis. "New light on ancient battles." MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History 20 (Winter 2008): 28-35. Maddicott, J. R. "Responses to the threat of invasion, 1085." English Historical Review 122 (September 2007): 986-997. 1500-1815 Military Affairs Aaslestad, Katherine. "Republican traditions: patriotism, gender, and war in Hamburg, 1770-1815." European History Quarterly 37 (October 2007): 582-602. Aaslestad, Katherine and others. "Introduction: Gender, war and the nation in the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – European perspectives." European History Quarterly 37 (October 2007): 501-506. [End Page 641] Cormack, Andrew. "Observations on the later life of Lieutenant-General the Honorable Robert Monckton and the lives of his children." Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 85 (2007): 275-285. Hagemann, Karen. "`Heroic virgins' and `bellicose amazons': armed women, the gender order and the German public during and after the anti-Napoleonic wars." European History Quarterly 37 (October 2007): 507-527. Hopkin, David. "Sieges, seduction and sacrifices in Revolutionary War: the `Virgins of Verdun', 1792." European History Quarterly 37 (October 2007): 528-547. Randall, Willard Sterne. "The first American victory." MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History 20 (Winter 2008): 64-73. Showalter, Dennis. "European power projection." MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History 20 (Winter 2008): 46-55. Tone, John Lawrence. "A dangerous Amazon: Augustine Zaragoza and the Spanish Revolutionary War, 1808-1814." European History Quarterly 37 (October 2007): 548-561. 1816-1869 Military Affairs Crowther, C. P. "Was the Anaconda Plan the blueprint for Union victory in the American Civil War?" British Army Review (Autumn 2007): 70-76. Dawson, Joseph G. III. "Leaders for manifest destiny: American volunteer colonels serving in the U.S. – Mexican War." American Nineteenth Century History 7 (June 2006): 253-279. Legan, Marshall Scott. "Hang by the neck until dead': the trial and hanging of a member of the 22nd Texas Cavalry." Military History of the West 37 (2007): 55-68. Logue, Larry M. and Peter Blanck. "`Benefit of the doubt': African-American Civil War veterans and pensions." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38 (Winter 2008): 377-399. Sears, Stephen W. "Building the Army of the Potomac." MHQ: Quarterly Journal of Military History 20 (Winter 2008): 74-83. Skelton, William B. "The commanding generals and the question of civil control in the antebellum U.S. Army." American Nineteenth Century History 7 (June 2006): 153-172. Sodergren, Steven E. "Exercising restraint: military responses to Southern sentiment in California during the Civil War." Military History of the West 37 (2007): 1-27. Watson, Samuel J. "How the Army became accepted: West Point socialization, military accountability, and the nation-state during the Jacksonian era." American Nineteenth Century History 7 (June 2006): 219-251. Wells, David S. "Fact versus fiction: examples from the Indian Mutiny." Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 85 (2007): 292-299. Wettemann, Robert P., Jr. "A part or apart: the alleged...

The French Left and the Search for Political Community

One of the core issues in ‘rethinking the Left in France’ is the question of whether and how the Left in France can give renewed life to its basic values in the context of a transformed society. This paper analyses the historical relationship between the Left and the idea of community. It suggests some problems in the way in which the Left has conceptualized the idea of community. Those problems centre on the greater salience of difference, traditionally viewed with suspicion in the republican tradition inherited and developed by the French Left. A concept of community derived from the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy can be used to develop a revised and revived republicanism, a form of community appropriate to contemporary politics, thus contributing to a necessary rethinking of one of the French Left's most basic ideas.

Dahl's power and republican freedom

Dahl's classic analysis of power needs a few more or less minor corrections and it needs to be extended so that power can be exercised other than by punctual actions and can have other than punctual effects. But corrected and extended in this way, it provides a base from which it is possible to articulate a number of radical points of view and, in particular, to define the sort of control or domination that is opposed to freedom, on the traditional republican conception.

Spinoza on being sui iuris and the republican conception of liberty

Spinoza's use of the phrase “ sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power [sub potestate] of the state ( TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful.

Power, Personalism, and Provisioning in Russian History

Power, Personalism, and Provisioning in Russian History Stephen Lovell (bio) Tamara Kondratieva , Gouverner et nourrir: Du pouvoir en Russie (XVIe– XXe siècles) [Govern and Feed: Power in Russia from the 16th to the 20th Centuries]. 273 pp. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2002. ISBN 2251380574. €21.00. Translated as Tamara Kondrat'eva, Kormit' i pravit': O vlasti v Rossii XVI–XX vv. 207 pp. Moscow: Rosspen, 2006. ISBN 5824307105. Alena V. Ledeneva , How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business. 270 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. ISBN 0801473527. $22.95 (paper). No wonder the Soviets liked politekonomiia so much: in Russia, as these two books remind us, the constituent elements of this discipline have been impossibly hard to disentangle. Tamara Kondratieva and Alena Ledeneva both explore the interpenetration in Russia of politics and economics, and both attach particular importance to social practices rather than policy formation or macroeconomic trends. Beyond this common ground, however, their two books could hardly be more different. Kondratieva's book is a work on the grand chronological scale: it argues for broad connections in Russian politico-economic culture between the Muscovite court of the 16th and 17th centuries and the various courts of the "red tsars" of the 20th century. Ledeneva's study, although it, too, has recourse to historical arguments in a few places, is an ethnography of post-Soviet politics and business that draws its main body of primary material from interviews conducted in 1998–99. Both authors lived long enough in the Soviet Union that they possess abundant local knowledge, but they also departed Russia long enough ago to have accumulated a substantial theoretical toolkit in their new intellectual homes. Kondratieva left the Soviet Union for France in 1974, while Ledeneva moved to Britain in the early 1990s. In one case, the primary sources of inspiration are Paul Ricoeur and Marc Bloch; in the other, Pierre Bourdieu and [End Page 373] Ludwig Wittgenstein are to the fore. Both authors fully understand the value of "going native," but they also resist any tendency to pigeonhole Russia as irrational or otherwise inaccessible to methods of investigation that have worked on other places. In both works, however, Russia remains noteworthy—"exceptional," if anyone still dares use that word—for its heavy reliance on informal practices for establishing and maintaining authority, transacting business, and getting all manner of other things done. Ranging from the boardroom to the tsar's banquet table, these books consistently show unwritten norms trumping or circumventing formal rules, face-to-face interaction counting more than performance indicators, and opacity triumphing over transparency. Even if all this is accurate, it leaves us with an intellectual conundrum: how does one historicize—or otherwise make interesting—the quintessential? Is there any way of talking about informal practices in Russia, and about the cross-contamination of economics and politics, that does not amount to hand-wringing or reiterating truisms? Can we ultimately say anything more than that Russia is still ambling along those Muscovite folkways? To her great credit, Tamara Kondratieva has found a way of breathing historiographical life into these questions. The theme of her short and elegant book is stated clearly by the Foucauldian paired infinitives of her title: she is interested in the ways in which, over the last five centuries or so, the function of exercising power in Russia has been bound up with that of securing and bestowing food. For researchers focused on the Soviet 1930s, perhaps, Foucault's original Surveiller et punir (Discipline and Punish) might seem a better choice, but Gouverner et nourrir makes a great deal of sense in Kondratieva's exposition. In the introduction to the Russian edition of her book, Kondratieva recalls that she originally wanted to reverse the order of her infinitives and call the book Nourrir et gouverner. She was persuaded not to by her publisher and her colleagues, who argued that French readers would not understand the title: brought up in the republican tradition of the social contract, they would expect this to be a study of the ways in which government organized the provisioning of society. The role of government, according to this view...

Embracing a Civic Republican Tradition in Natural Resources Decision-Making

Public participation processes in agency decision-making are commonplace today and they consume substantial portions of agency budgets. But agencies often struggle to design processes that meaningfully engage the public. The lack of meaningful engagement is often excused as the fault of the other side. The agency faults the public for comments that lack specificity or that fail to account for the factual and legal constraints underlying the proposal, and the public faults the agency for ignoring its comments or failing to take them into account in making its final decision. Public frustrations with agency process often exacerbate public disenchantment with agency decisions.This paper offers a prescription for making public processes more meaningful in the context of policy decisions impacting natural resources. It begins by tracing the history of public participation in government action. It then reviews the arguments that support public participation, as well as several reasons that may counsel against it. Participation processes will surely endure, but a better appreciation of the challenges that participation processes present can help agencies tailor their processes to be more meaningful. The chapter then analyzes the theoretical foundations for public participation, concluding that the civic republican tradition offers the only viable approach for meaningfully engaging the public in natural resources decision-making. Various modes of participation are then evaluated in light of the civic republican model, with suggestions for modifying these processes to enhance their utility in engaging the pubic. Finally, the chapter discusses some of the ongoing problems with current public processes and suggests possible reforms.

Für eine republikanische Kultur der Freiheit. Machiavellis klassischer Republikanismus

Given the renewed interest in republicanism in political theory and the role Machiavelli plays in the republican tradition, this essay seeks to explore Machiavelli’s republicanism. As an interpretive startingpoint it claims Machiavelli to be a „classical republican“, a „Sattelzeitdenker“ between ancient republicanism and modern republicanism. While Machiavelli heavily relies on greek and roman republicanism, he at the same time transforms them, thereby developing some central thoughts of modern republicanism, without becoming a modern republican in the full sense. I argue that by doing so he anticipates avant la lettre a central problem of liberalism. He conceptualizes the republican order as an institutionalised persistent conflict between social factions, but is also aware, that the Republic rests on a republican culture of freedom, that creates the citizens virtue in the first place.

Historia, discurso y prácticas sociales. Una contribución a los futuros debates sobre el republicanismo decimonónico y las culturas políticas

This is an explicit contribution —in relation with previous studies— to the debates about historical republicanism and political cultures. The author starts off the reflections concerning the characteristics into scientifical-historical debate, extending it for theoretical and methodological renovation of the analysis of historical agents and their social practices. Paying special methodological attention to the theory of the action based on the denominated practical reasons , it is carried out a theoretical clarification on the language , discourse , political cultures and social mobilization concepts. After these are developed analytically so in the study of the making of the spanish political cultures and social movements with a republican tradition in the nineteenth-century, as in the interpretation of their social practices.

Black republican tradition, nativism and populist politics in South Africa

The formation of the Native Club in 2006 provoked widespread debate across South African society as it was deemed to be heralding black reverse racism in a country that had only recently emerged from the violent and exclusivist system of apartheid. The Native Club was interpreted as a threat to the spirit of ‘rainbowism’ and to current efforts at forging common citizenship for whites and blacks. The main weakness of the current debates on the Native Club and the phenomenon of nativism is the relative absence of historicisation and contextualisation within broader issues – in particular antinomies in black liberation thought and historical populist imaginations of citizenship and the nation. This article seeks to historicise and contextualise the Native Club and the phenomenon of nativism within the broader politics of contested conceptualisations of the national question and contested definitions of the teleology of the liberation struggle, as well as differing imaginations of the nation and visions of citizenship and democracy. It is only through a grounded and nuanced historical approach that the logic and the dangers of nativism could be understood together with the resurgence of populist politics crystallising around Jacob Zuma and the broader succession debate currently enveloping South Africa.

Machiavelli's Hybrid Republicanism

This article addresses contrasts between Machiavelli's early and late republican writings. It argues that Machiavelli does not in the Discori straightforwardly champion the ancient Roman republican example. It examines several paradoxes and tensions within the Discorsi to show that even in the midst of his praise of Rome, Machiavelli had doubts about the viability and logical coherency of the Roman model. It contrasts those doubts with Machiavelli's Florentine writings in the 1520s that establish a republican model based on principles, convictions, and arguments not evident in his reflections on Rome. His later writings—a hybrid republicanism—fuse Greek, Roman, and Florentine republican traditions and modify classical ideas to accommodate the more fluid social and political setting of sixteenth-century Florence.

Of Basques, Greeks, and Germans: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Ancient Republican Tradition in the Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt

The relationships between German intellectuals and politics at the turn of the nineteenth century have been much debated, with the nature of the German liberal tradition at the core of controversy, and with questions about the interconnections between liberalism, nationalism, and neohumanistBildungcircling not far beyond that core. Prominent in such discussions stands the figure of the Prussian scholar and statesman Wilhelm von Humboldt. Best known today variously for his part in overhauling the Prussian educational system during the “reform era” of Chancellors Stein and Hardenberg, or for helping to establish the disciplines of classical philology and comparative linguistics, Humboldt also authored one of the seminal texts in the European liberal tradition and was actively involved in the diplomacy, constitutional planning, and nationalist upheaval surrounding Napoleon's expulsion from Germany and the subsequent construction of the German Confederation.