Republicanism
Freedom means not being subject to anyone’s arbitrary power — which requires active citizens and dispersed authority, not merely being left alone.
What does this mean?
Republicanism defines liberty differently from liberalism, and the difference does real work. The liberal is free when nobody interferes with him. The republican is free only when nobody *could* interfere with him arbitrarily — when he is not dependent on another’s goodwill. A slave with an indulgent master suffers no interference and is nonetheless unfree, because the indulgence could be withdrawn at any moment. Freedom is the absence of domination, not merely of obstruction.
This has consequences. Non-domination cannot be secured by leaving people alone; it requires institutions — mixed government, separation of powers, the rule of law, and a citizenry active enough to notice and resist encroachment. It makes civic virtue a political requirement rather than a private preference, and it makes concentrated wealth a political problem, since dependence on an employer or a landlord is a form of subjection whether or not it is exercised.
The tradition runs from Rome through the Italian city-states, the English Commonwealth, and the American and French revolutions, and was substantially recovered by historians and philosophers from the 1970s. It is neither left nor right on economics, which is why it sits near the centre here while scoring at the extreme on the power axis.
Where did it come from?
Traced from the Roman republic through Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy, the English Commonwealth writers, and the American founders, who read themselves as reviving it. It was substantially recovered as a living tradition by J. G. A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit from the 1970s onwards.
Major thinkers
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- James Harrington
- Hannah Arendt
- Quentin Skinner
- Philip Pettit
Historical figures
- Thomas Jefferson
- Simón Bolívar
- Giuseppe Garibaldi
- José Martí
What it looks like today
- Constitutional separation of powers and judicial review as standard democratic architecture
- Anti-corruption and transparency institutions treated as freedom-protecting rather than merely administrative
- Arguments for workplace democracy grounded in non-domination rather than in equality of income
Where it sits on each dimension
Wealth and inequality
Not committed either way in principle, but concentrated wealth is treated as a political problem because dependence is a form of subjection.
The state in the economy
Personal liberty
Freedom is non-domination rather than non-interference. Law that prevents anyone from wielding arbitrary power is freedom-enhancing, not freedom-limiting.
Tradition and change
Nation and the world
Religion and the state
Historically anticlerical where churches held political power, though its objection is to unaccountable authority rather than to belief.
Power and its limits
The definitional axis, and the tradition sits at its extreme: dispersed, checkable power is not a constraint on freedom but its precondition.
Environment and growth
Crime and punishment
Its strongest arguments
- Non-domination explains cases the non-interference account cannot — the indulgent master, the benevolent employer, the unenforced but available power.
- It gives a positive account of why institutions and civic participation matter, rather than treating them as necessary evils.
- It has proved unusually portable, underwriting arguments in constitutional design, labour relations and anti-corruption policy alike.
Its strongest criticisms
- Its demand for civic virtue and active participation may be unrealistic in large, diverse and busy societies.
- Historically it was compatible with excluding most of the population — women, the propertyless, the enslaved — from the citizenry whose freedom it protected.
- Critics argue non-domination is too capacious: almost any inequality can be redescribed as a form of domination, which drains the concept.
Common misconceptions
- That it means opposition to monarchy. Constitutional monarchies can satisfy non-domination, and several republicans have said so; the objection is to arbitrary power, not to crowns.
- That it is the same as liberalism. The definition of freedom differs, and the republican account makes dependence a loss of liberty even where no interference occurs.
- That it has no economic content. Its concern with dependence generates arguments about property and employment that liberalism does not.
A caveat
Republicanism is defined by the power axis far more than by the economic ones. Someone can match it strongly while holding very different views on redistribution.
Sources
- Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy · 1531
- Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government · 1997
- Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism · 1998