Republicanism in Theory and Practice

Iseult Honohan, Jeremy Jennings, Iseult Honohan, Jeremy Jennings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134247691
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Recent claims that civic republicanism can better address contemporary political problems than either liberalism or communitarianism are generating an intense debate.

This is a sharp insight into this debate, confronting normative theory with historical and comparative analysis. It examines whether republican theory can address contemporary political problems in ways that are both valuable and significantly different in practice from liberalism. These expert authors offer contrasting perspectives on issues raised by the contemporary revival of republicanism and adopt a variety of methodological approaches to address the practical implications of republican thought within a coherent thematic framework. This book also

*clarifies core themes and contested areas of republican thought, especially the notion of liberty, the specific political institutions needed to realize it, and the nature of solidarity among citizens.

* shows how republicanism continued to influence the development of liberal thought in nineteenth century Britain

* examines the development of alternative republican discourses, including the established political practice and ideology of the French republican tradition

* applies republican perspectives to contemporary political concerns such as the creation of social trust and the expansion of public accountability

* explores the implications of republican theory for policy areas including houses, education and marriage in diverse multicultural societies

This book will be of great interest to researchers and students studying republicanism in political science history, social policy and education. In addition, it is a valuable resource for those concerned with citizenship, democratic theory, multiculturalism, nationalism and patriotism, and politics beyond the nation-state.

1 Introduction

Iseult Honohan and Jeremy Jennings

To remark upon the recent revival of interest in republicanism has become something of a commonplace. We are all familiar with the context in which this has taken place. The collapse of actually existing communism in Europe seemed to denote not merely the demise of Marxism as a political philosophy but also the triumph of economic and political liberalism. If, in philosophical terms, John Rawls and others, such as Isaiah Berlin, came to define the character and parameters of debate, in the world of political practice the message was that of the market and a much-reduced level of State activity. To that extent, the eighteenth-century advocates of a commercial society, such as David Hume and Adam Smith, seemed at last to have secured their victory. The fact of pluralism announced by Rawls, far from being accompanied by the social democratic policy of wealth distribution he advocated, has looked in reality to be no more than one manifestation of a broader individualism that has come to characterize society as a whole. Perhaps understandably, political philosophers showed themselves unwilling to abandon their historic preoccupation with issues of social justice and thus, in reaction to the triumph of liberal individualism, set out to recover and to develop an alternative and more attractive vision of what it might mean to be a citizen in the societies of today.

The republican argument has come a long way since it first began to surface in the writings of Quentin Skinner, John Pocock and Philip Pettit. The core of its claim, however, amounts to the conviction that a doctrine, which has its origins in the Roman Republic, and which subsequently has intermittently made itself felt in Western political thought and practice, can be re-claimed and re-configured in such a way as to furnish a workable model in present-day politics. Conceptions of self-rule, non-domination and an attachment to a more vigorous form of individual liberty are brought to the fore so as to challenge the purely negative (and dominant) description of freedom as the absence of coercive interference. This ‘act of excavation’, to use Skinner’s phrase, has not been without its successes or influence – it has itself established something of a new orthodoxy – but to an extent it has left more questions unanswered than answered.

Here then we might pause briefly to reflect upon the challenges and objections that the republican revival has encountered. These have been usefully and accurately summarized by Robert E. Goodin (Goodin 2003). Goodin makes one general and overall criticism. Whilst the component propositions advanced by republicanism are ‘independently attractive . . . their attraction is independent of republicanism’ (Goodin 2003: 72). All, in short, could be arrived at by other means. Self-government, a mixed constitution and ‘a resilient liberty’, he points out, could be defended on many different grounds, of which republicanism is only one. In particular, it would be difficult to differentiate the defence of all three offered by republicanism from those advanced by liberalism. Beyond this, Goodin makes a series of specific criticisms. Understood as non-domination, republicanism ‘constitutes a movement back to a status society of a strikingly pre-modern form’ (Goodin 2003: 61). If contemporary republicans reject the hierarchical status orders associated with ancient and early modern republics and picture their new republics as single-status communities, the equality they envisage ‘is purely an equality of status, the status of citizen’. As a consequence, Goodin contends, many republicans are ‘indifferent to broader distributional questions’ (Goodin 2003: 62). Next, status societies tend to be societies ‘driven by notions of honor and shame, dignity and embarrassment’ (Goodin 2003: 63). The requirement is that people internalize a set of social norms, and such is the case with republicanism. This produces at least two negative consequences. The code of honour applies only to fellow citizens; thus, according to Goodin, republicanism ‘constitutes a particularly vicious form of closed communitarianism’ (Goodin 2003: 64). Second, republican virtue is a virtue attributable to character, and as such is not only narrowly circumscribed and limited in application to one’s fellow citizens but also focuses upon self-image and is therefore ‘indifferent’ to its consequences on others. Moreover, for republicans, civic virtue has traditionally come with ‘a martial twist’. Again, Goodin accepts that contemporary republicans ‘may no longer welcome the martial implications of the model with quite such gusto’ but nonetheless ‘the republican ideal still clearly remains the sturdy man of honor, relying only on the strength of his own arms’ (Goodin 2003: 66). Goodin, however, reserves his most-telling criticisms to the last. What is attractive about republicanism, he contends, is its attachment to self-governing communities grounded upon extensive public deliberation. But deliberation presupposes small numbers of people and is ‘simply infeasible’ when the ‘populace is too populous’, i.e. in modern societies (Goodin 2003: 68). Finally, republicans count on deliberation as a means of allowing individual citizens to transcend narrow self-interest and seek out the common good. Yet republicanism’s ‘strong prioritization of the public over the private risks undercutting the autonomy (and indeed independence) of individual judgment’ (Goodin 2003: 69). If republicanism is to avoid ‘sliding into communitarian excess’ the challenge is to identify ‘some method whereby the common good can be discerned among individuals whose identities are not assumed to be (or reconstructed to be) wholly constituted by their membership in the collectivity’ (Goodin 2003: 67). Goodin’s stark conclusion is that we should not be fooled by republicanism’s seductive and deceptive charms: ‘it does not represent a way forward for contemporary political theory’ (Goodin 2003: 73).

It would be incorrect to suggest that the essays gathered together in this collection are an attempt, either directly or indirectly, to refute these criticisms. Their origin was rather a four-day workshop organized under the auspices of the European Consortium for Political Research at its conference in Edinburgh in April 2003. They are, however, a response to the considerable prominence achieved by the claims of civic republicanism to better address contemporary political problems than either liberalism or com-munitarianism, and to the debate that has ensued. The intention was thus to confront normative theory with historical and comparative analysis in order to explore the argument that republican theory can address contemporary political problems in ways that are both valuable and significantly different in practice from liberalism. The essays attempt to do this in four distinct ways: by clarifying the core themes and contested areas of republican thought; by addressing key issues that have come to the forefront of debate in the current republican revival; by examining alternative republican discourses (including the established political practice and ideology of the French republican tradition); and by applying republican perspectives to contemporary political concerns in a variety of different contexts.

In line with these objectives, the essays are organized around a set of common themes or sections. They begin with an assessment of the conceptions of liberty that have been the principal focus of much of the academic debate on contemporary republican thought. Using a historically informed typology of republicanism, Per Mouritsen argues that republicans are distinguished less by the conception of liberty they hold than the conditions they identify as being necessary to enjoy liberty. The controversial contention is that the particular way in which republicanism has been characterized, most notably by Skinner and Pettit, is not the only possible way, nor is it necessarily the most helpful. In this account, there have existed a series of distinct republican moments as well as distinct modes of republican thinking, with the latter carrying quite different messages for a contemporary audience. In particular, Mouritsen draws attention to a later strand of liberal-pluralist republicanism associated with such thinkers as Tocqueville that has not only been largely ignored in recent writings but that would be potentially immune from the types of criticism levelled by Goodin.

The next part of the collection comprises chapters exploring distinct historical expressions of republicanism. While the precise connection between historical ideas and contemporary arguments is a matter of debate, historical analysis has played an important role in the republican revival. The focus in recent studies has been on retrieving the early modern period (e.g. Bock et al., 1990; Fontana 1994; Wootton 1994; van Gelderen and Skinner 2002). The nineteenth and much of the twentieth century have been understood as a period in which republicanism virtually vanished from the political scene, in which socialism and nationalism were the dominant ideologies and liberalism and utilitarianism were the prevailing political philosophies. These chapters challenge this consensus, highlighting the persistence of republican thinking at this time and showing how republican thought was used to criticize current political practice. In the case of France, this is probably not altogether surprising, but even here the conventional picture of a stable and relatively unchanging republican doctrine needs to be modified. Under the shadow of events – especially the 1848 Revolution and the advent of the Second Empire in 1852 – republicanism was transposed into a more practical and moderate doctrine. The programme developed by leading theorists of republicanism came to emphasize the provision of education by the State rather than the pursuit of economic equality, the recognition of rights rather than the reign of virtue, the advent of social solidarity rather than the all-encompassing embrace of fraternity, and in institutional terms the need for restraints on executive power rather than an advocacy of direct popular sovereignty. Again, this version of republicanism, for all its lack of romantic fervour, might be less susceptible to the ‘folie républicaine’ diagnosed by Goodin.

The British case is also instructive. The case advanced by Skinner and others has been that neo-Roman arguments for republicanism were eclipsed by utilitarianism and thus that an understanding of liberty as non-domination was replaced in British political thought by the conception of freedom as the absence of interference and coercion. An alternative reading suggests that republican thought persisted in nineteenth-century Britain and that it interacted with utilitarianism and liberalism rather than being replaced by them. Moreover, under the pressure of external events (especially the spectre of French republicanism) the languages of republicanism in Britain were transformed into a modified constitutionalism. In doing so, the neo-classical vision of the active citizen was reworked in the context of a modern commercial society, thereby finding its way into the writings of J.S. Mill as well as later idealist-liberals such as Bosanquet and T.H. Green. An even more surprising challenge to the tenor of Goodin’s argument comes from examining the case in Ireland. It is a somewhat curious fact that to date the republican revival has not turned its attention to Ireland, surely one of the few countries where it could be said that republicanism has played a decisive, not to say dominant, role in determining political thought and practice. Here we see a clear example of how republicanism in the hands of the Irish state was transposed into the narrow communitarianism of which Goodin warns us. Yet the chapter in this volume shows precisely how the language of republicanism was itself deployed to combat this very phenomenon. The Irish government’s programme for a Catholic and Gaelicized communitarian republic built upon a romanticized vision of a pastoral, pre-colonial mythical past was challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, in the name of a modern, urban, nonsectarian and liberal republicanism.

The third section focuses upon the social underpinnings of trust and solidarity between citizens, issues which republicans have traditionally tended to emphasize more than liberals. These have increasingly come to be seen as important in the light of declining levels of voter participation in liberal democracies as well as in the context of establishing democratic institutions and practices in transitional polities. In Goodin’s account ‘republican honor’ is reduced to amour propre and ‘narcissistic personalism’ and he therefore characterizes it as little more than a ‘list morality’ (Goodin 2003: 65). There is no substance to it, only appearance, and it is a ‘precious’ appearance at that. Political trust, something which is generally considered good for democracy, could presumably have little real purchase in such an ethically shallow environment. Again there is plenty of evidence to suggest that republican authors were aware of this problem – they readily accepted that the trust-warranting properties of political representatives could be easily imitated – and that they therefore recognized the importance that needed to be attached to the ability of the people properly to assess the personal characteristics of their representatives. In this view, republican writers from Cicero to the American founders acknowledged that institutional devices – in particular those that later were associated with the idea of a mixed constitution – provided at best imperfect solutions to the problem of a divergence of interest between governed and governors, and thus that the people should possess the capacity either to recognize or select good agents who genuinely sought to realize the common good. Accordingly, the trust necessary for representative politics is not a substitute for, but is rather strengthened by, information on the character of politicians.

When we consider the issue of solidarity, Goodin looks undoubtedly to be on firmer ground, for is it not the case that at the heart of the republican revival is the desire to endorse a post-traditional community held together by the civic concern and participation of ordinary citizens, and is this not a form of solidarity that looks dangerously threatening to those who hold divergent or minority views? An analysis of the ideas of Viroli, Pettit and Hannah Arendt goes some way to endorsing this conclusion. There is a danger that the forms of solidarity described will either be too thick to guarantee toleration or not thick enough to unite citizens effectively into the sort of civic community that is being envisaged. However, here again there is room for a nuanced response. In addition, the argument can be advanced that the model of solidarity propounded by Arendt – understood as equal access to the public realm and cooperation in political action – is relatively free of what might be regarded as threatening communitarian excesses. If Arendt wishes to establish that individuals have more in common than their private interests, she does not see solidarity in terms of replicating common perspectives, or as requiring either the redistribution of wealth or the realization of social justice.

Our next section examines the kinds of political institutions required for republican politics and in so doing addresses the frequently expressed criticism that contemporary republican theory is insufficiently specific about the political institutions it entails. Two chapters outline contrasting proposals for democratic republican institutions, one based on freedom as non-domination, the other on a more transformational politics of participation. The third chapter explores the republican framework necessary to secure the development of democratic institutions beyond the nation-state, specifically in the European Union. The challenge faced by such proposals is made clear enough by Goodin. ‘The problem’, he writes, ‘does not lie in any analytic difficulties with the notion of “public interest” or “common good” . . . The difficulty with these concepts is operational, a problem of finding some reliable way politically to determine their content and to harness political action effectively in their service’ (Goodin 2003: 72). Lacking credible institutional mechanisms, the argument goes, republicanism is reduced to mere verbiage. The challenge can be readily met however, although no doubt not to the satisfaction of all critics. Maynor, for example, moves beyond the abstract claim that ‘republican processes and policies must guard against both active and passive domination’ and argues that the realization of republican freedom as non-domination in plural societies requires contestatory institutions that increase electoral competition, actively consult citizens, promote deliberation and constantly review the exercise of governmental power (Maynor, this volume: 128). Accepting that such initiatives would not, on their own, resolve the problem of voter apathy, he nevertheless disputes the claims that the institutionalizing of contestation would lead to intractable deadlock and that the burden of participation would make excessive demands on citizens. Schwarzmantel’s approach is arguably a more radical one. If Maynor alludes to the need for a republicanism committed to equalizing ‘intersubjective power relationships’ to pay more attention to the forms of economic inequality, Schwarzmantel addresses the issue head-on. Responding to the problems of citizenship and fragmentation evident in current liberal democracies, he argues for a transformational view of the ‘new republic’ detached from its liberal connections, creating new political spaces and addressing socio-economic inequalities as the basis for empowering citizens. In this view, citizens are formed and transformed in part through institutional design. At another level, contemporary theorists have looked to a variety of republican arguments – from mixed government to enhanced citizenship – to address the current perplexities of the European Union more satisfactorily than liberal democratic models (e.g. Bellamy and Castiglione 2000; Lavdas 2001a; Bellamy 2003). But the challenge to republicanism is arguably even greater at a supra-national/ European level. How can citizens fulfil the duties and obligations demanded of them by republicanism towards a political community that is at best an artificial and recent invention? How can that community create institutions that will provide the democratic public space necessary for meaningful citizenship? How indeed can the common good of an amorphous (some would say non-existent) European demos be articulated? To resolve those questions is no easy task, but it is possible for republicanism to provide a sketch of the general direction in which the European polity ought to move if it is to come to embody republican ideals. As a first step this would require the substantial reconfiguration of EU civic arenas so as to allow the level of public deliberation necessary for the articulation of the public interest and to facilitate the construction of a constitutional framework ordered around the principles of balanced government. The chapter by Lavdas and Chryssochoou specifies some of the institutional arrangements that this would require. Crucially they would be designed to make possible an active European citizenship.

The issue of citizenship is at the heart of the final section of our volume. The three chapters examine the policy implications of republican theory for the areas of marriage, housing and education, showing how republican thought may be applied in contemporary contexts of plural and multicultural societies, and analysing the extent to which this leads to policies different from contemporary liberal approaches. It was Rousseau, writing in his Discourse on Political Economy, who commented that ‘to form citizens is not the work of a day’ (Rousseau 1993: 147). This is a sentiment shared by all republicans, but what sense can be given to citizenship in an age which seems at times incongruously to combine the demands of diverse ethnic communities with those of individual economic self-interest? In this context, republicanism can look a touch reactionary, like a plea to re-establish a lost world where citizens were law-abiding and community-minded and where we all upheld what are taken to be the decent values of civility. As Iseult Honohan therefore shows, the key question is that of deciding what kind of commonality or solidarity is now to be desired amongst citizens. From this will follow a set of institutional arrangements that can be designed to facilitate this outcome. Crucially, in an age characterized by the fact of pluralism it cannot be the case that solidarity should be understood in terms of fostering a common cultural identity. Religious and cultural differences have to be accommodated and not integrated to the point of non-existence.

None of the above is to suggest that republicanism can easily brush aside the arguments that are levelled against it, nor is it to imply that republicanism has a set of ready-made and definitive answers. Republicanism is not only multi-faceted but it is also very much a theory still under construction. How then might republicanism evolve in the future?

It is worth remembering that republicanism is not only a theory but also a practice and one that has been with us for centuries. If, broadly speaking, it has come to be associated with a particular set of institutional arrangements it is important to recognize that actually existing republicanism (much like actually existing liberalism) has been forged by historical experience and that out of that experience has come not only variety but also compromise. Republicanism has produced a diverse set of political cultures and mythologies, each of which has its heroes and villains, its key historical moments and symbols. For many, the difficulty has been that of marrying ideals of ancient and classical origin to the demands of a modern society. In the eighteenth century (and subsequently) republicans were for example obsessed (not to say haunted) by the question of whether a republic was a viable model for large states. To resolve that problem they were obliged to reconcile themselves to indirect, as opposed to direct, representation, and to countenance not merely the balance of powers but also their separation through such institutional arrangements as federalism. That model, as testified most famously by Tocqueville, appeared to work in America, providing the modern world with its most successful and enduring republican form, but only a few years later the attempt to repeat the exercise in Europe came quickly crashing to the ground in a welter of indiscriminate violence and terror. The contrasting experiences of France and the United States tell us much about the many-sided and complex nature of the republican tradition. Both conceived the Republic in terms of the sovereignty of the people and saw freedom in terms of the absence of privilege and of arbitrary power. However, if in the USA, and after much debate, institutions were constructed so as to accommodate both political faction and a diversity of religious faiths, in France the First (Jacobin) Republic was characterized by a passion for political unity and a deep enmity towards established Christian religion. Only later did the French Republic endow itself with a contrived institutional arrangement of President, Senate and Chamber of Deputies, which ensured that the popular will of the people was never able to push the Republic in a radical direction. The struggle against religion remained h...