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Introduction
A decade ago, after a sustained period of retreat, progressive politics looked to be back in business. The left won a wave of elections across Europe, including Labour's triumphant return to power in the UK at the 1997 general election. The long period of right-wing dominance in US politics had been challenged with the election of a Democrat president in two successive elections (although the Democrats also lost control of Congress in 1994). A decade on, most of those governments have gone and Labour itself is having great difficulty renewing itself in office. Many of its erstwhile supporters have doubts about what it has achieved in the decade or so it has had in government. In the US, the White House has been in the hands of the right for almost eight years and an election of a potentially more progressive Democrat in 2008 remains far from certain (as do the prospects for progressive politics if a Democratic President were elected). Against this background, there is a clear need to return to first principles and consider what progressive politics is about as a first step towards political and social renewal. This book is a contribution to this urgent task. Taking stock of a range of theoretical and political developments, we will outline and explore an attractive and promising progressive public philosophy which we call republican democracy.
To start at the theoretical level, there has recently been a striking revival of interest in something, or some things, called 'republicanism' within Anglo-American academic political theory. Here we have seen a vigorous 'republican turn', variously developed in work by Stephen Elkin, David Miller, Chantal Mouffe, Karma Nabulsi, Philip Pettit, Michael Sandel, Quentin Skinner, Gareth Stedman Jones, Cass Sunstein, Charles Taylor and Maurizio Viroli, to name just some.1 This republican turn has logical connections to a wide range of other important recent discussions in academic political theory, such as those around the ideas of deliberative democracy and new forms of property rights.2 Many of the practical expressions of these ideas have been explored by the 'Real Utopias Project' directed by Erik Olin Wright at the Havens Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.3
Interest in these ideas is not confined to the Anglo-American context. The Spanish Socialist Party was so impressed with the work of one of these theorists, Pettit, that it invited him to make an interim assessment of the Socialist government's success in advancing republican goals. Some French republicans have also recently begun creatively to rethink their tradition in light of this recent theoretical work.4 Republican democracy, as we use the term here, is a broad, ecumenical political vision based on a common ground discernible within these contemporary developments in political theory.
The idea of republican democracy has roots in the world of practice, however, as well as theory. On the one hand we can make connections between republican democracy and some of the policies of contemporary progressive governments, such as that of Labour in Britain. Examples here include Labour's modest but innovative experimentation with things such as 'asset-based welfare' and new forms of citizen involvement in decision-making. On the other hand, we can make connections between republican democracy and the rise of new popular, citizen-based campaigns and movements, such as locally based Living Wage campaigns, which may oppose or seek to radicalize government policy. Such movements embody the kind of active citizenship which is central to republican democracy. Strategically, republican democracy sees party politics on the one hand, and movement/campaign politics on the other, with roots in trade unions, churches and community groups, as equally important. Party politics provides a vehicle for moving government policy in the right direction. But it is important to have a strong, active and oppositional civil society to nurture the virtues of republican citizenship and, not least, to pressure party politicians to do the right thing.
These opening remarks provoke some obvious questions: What, more exactly, is republican democracy? What is so distinctive about it? And how, exactly, do the contributions to this book cast further light on it?
1. What is republicanism?
'Republicanism' is notoriously hard to pin down. Historically, by no means
all thinkers described as republican have opposed monarchy. If they have,
they have not necessarily seen this as all there is to republicanism or as
necessarily the most important plank of the republican programme. If we try
to identify a clear historical tradition of republican thinking, matters quickly
become complicated and controversial (Philp 1999). Past thinkers frequently
labelled as republican include Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Harrington,
Rousseau, Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Wollstonecraft, Mazzini, Tocqueville,
Green, and Arendt (Honohan 2002). But these thinkers are obviously not all
saying the same thing. Nor do contemporary political theorists who self-describe
as republicans - such as David Miller, Philip Pettit, Michael Sandel, Quentin
Skinner, and Charles Taylor - necessarily mean the same thing by the term.
Nevertheless, use of the term does not seem to be entirely arbitrary. There
do seem to be certain core ideas which incline historians to categorize a
thinker, or contemporary theorists to describe themselves, as republican.
Different thinkers might understand these ideas, and link them together, in
different ways. But the more central these ideas are to a political thinker's
work, the more defensible it is to regard the work as republican.5 What are
these core ideas?
(1) The common good: the legitimate polity is a polity in which rule is reliably oriented to the common good of those subject to this rule. The exercise of authority over subjects of the state is legitimate only when it serves their common good. The common good contrasts with the good of a specific section of the community, promoted at the expense of the wider community. This idea is contained in the original meaning of 'republic' as a political system which serves the 'res publica' (the public concern) rather than the private whims or interests of only one section of society.
(2) Inclusion: the legitimate polity is a polity in which rule is exercised inclusively. Historically, most thinkers whom historians term republican have favoured a significant degree of popular involvement in collective decision-making as a vital way of encouraging decisions that promote the common good. This is not to say that all republicans have been democrats. Many classical republican thinkers, such as Machiavelli, proposed some form of 'mixed constitution' combining elements of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy as best at promoting the common good. By contrast, contemporary republicans are emphatically democratic.
(3) Deliberation: the legitimate polity is a polity in which rule is exercised following informed deliberation. The legitimate exercise of state authority is connected with appropriate deliberation in the making of decisions. Laws and policies must emerge from a process of reasoned justification by decision-makers in open discussion with one another. Appropriate deliberation is necessary, or at least very helpful, to taking decisions which reliably promote the common good. Note, however, how this characterisation of the goal of deliberation might affect our understanding of what a valid 'reason' in deliberation is: it must be one that can plausibly be appealed to as pertaining to the common good. There is a clear link here with recent theories of deliberative democracy which explore this issue in depth.6
While contemporary republicans may be democrats, there is typically a recognition of the danger of the 'tyranny of the majority' emphasized by Madison, Tocqueville and Mill. To address this concern, contemporary republicans borrow from the mixed constitution theorists the idea of 'checks and balances'. The people are sovereign. But their proper deliberation can and should be encouraged by arranging power at one point in the political system so that it is met by power at another. Resistances within the system not only block the rapid adoption of bad policy, but thereby prompt the citizen body to reconsider what it is doing, deepening its deliberation. To be deliberative, democracy must be, as Philip Pettit puts it, 'contestatory'.
(4) Independence (or non-domination): the good society is one in which every citizen is free in the sense of not being subject to domination by others. The common good of the citizenry can be understood, centrally, as the common interest that each citizen has in being a free individual. Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit have further argued that there is a distinctive republican conception of what freedom itself is: freedom as non-domination (Pettit 1997, Skinner 1998). On one view, freedom consists in the absence of force or coercion. But the absence of actual force/coercion is consistent with having the status of an unfree person. The slave might have a lazy or benign master who does not actually force or coerce him. But, so Pettit and Skinner argue, the slave remains unfree because the master has the power to intervene in the slave's life, when and however he or she likes. Merely to live subject to this arbitrary power of intervention, to live 'at the mercy' of others in Rousseau's phrase, makes one unfree.7 Whatever the historical significance of this conception of freedom, an issue which is much disputed by historians of political thought (Philp 1999), there is no doubting that Pettit and Skinner have clarified something of great moral importance. To serve a genuine common good, a polity must create the conditions which prevent citizens from dominating each other in social and economic life. In addition, the polity must itself be structured so that it has a non-dominating relationship to its members. In Pettit's account, this requirement takes us back to the idea of a deliberative and contestatory democracy sketched above.
(5) Participation: the maintenance of republican institutions demands a citizenry which is able and willing to participate in collective decision-making in a public-spirited fashion. A citizen is not merely someone with a particular legal status, but someone who participates in decision-making with a view to securing the common good. For some philosophers, such as Aristotle in his Politics, participation is inherently valuable, a vital component of human flourishing. For others, participation is important in a more instrumental way; it allegedly makes it more likely that the political system will serve the common good (Skinner in Miller ed. 1991). One variant of this idea, which we find in thinkers such as Tocqueville and Mill, is that participation in collective decision-making expands the individual's sense of being part of a community and their sensitivity to the interests of others. Participation, on this view, is not merely an expression of public-spiritedness, but a means of cultivating it.8
(6) Economic egalitarianism: the good society is one in which there is a limit to inequality of wealth amongst citizens. Finally, many of the thinkers we associate with republicanism consider the social and economic conditions that either constitute or promote the common good. There is, in particular, a concern to limit inequality of wealth (not just income, but property). This concern has a number of sources. One, which can be found in Aristotle and Rousseau, is that desperate poverty and great opulence can both undermine the public-spiritedness of the citizen and/or lead to instability that generates tyrannical rule. Even if the polity does not collapse into tyranny, its operation can be slowly but surely corrupted by the way wealth inequality distorts public deliberation. Not least, wealth inequality can lead directly to relationships of domination. If the poor rely on the rich for subsistence, then the rich can use this dependency to lord it over the lives of the poor. This is bad in itself and bad for political equality. Thus, Rousseau comments that 'no citizen should be rich enough to be able to buy another, and none so poor that he has to sell himself' (Rousseau 1994, 87).
The foregoing arguments for limiting wealth inequality are instrumental arguments: they appeal to the way in which greater equality serves some other goal such as democratic government or personal freedom. Some political theorists would argue that promotion of economic equality is also desirable for its own sake (though it may have to be traded off against other values at times; see White 2006, chapter 1). This view is not essential to republican democracy, as defined here, but it is perfectly consistent with it.
2. Capitalism, socialism
and republican democracy
We can refine our understanding of republican democracy by now considering
how it relates to one of the central political confrontations of the modern
age: that between capitalism and socialism. Where does republican democracy
stand on this conflict?
Let's start with capitalism. Let's take a capitalist society to be one characterised by: (1) a market-based allocation of resources; (2) private ownership of assets; and (3) considerable inequality in asset ownership. As suggested above, republican democracy will obviously view the third aspect of capitalism with immense concern. High levels of wealth inequality threaten political equality, effective deliberation and personal freedom. Indeed, it is arguable that such a society lacks the quality of a common good which is necessary to a genuine republic (Levine 2001, chapter 2). Appeals to the common good in such a society can easily - and often do - serve an ideological function of obscuring basic conflicts of interest deriving from wealth inequality.
Thus, republican democracy will echo to some degree the socialist critique of capitalism. Indeed, as Philip Pettit has argued, the socialist critique of capitalism has in fact frequently appealed to what Pettit regards as basic republican ideas. At the core of socialism lies a protest at what we may call the proletarian condition: a condition not simply of poverty, but of dependency on, and subordination to, the will of an employer. Socialist thinkers have repeatedly argued that specific measures to reduce inequalities have the effect of reducing this dependency and thereby increasing freedom. Freedom, R.H. Tawney comments, 'implies at least, that no man shall be amenable to an authority which is arbitrary in its proceedings'. Following Rousseau, he adds that this requires 'securities that the economically weak will not be at the mercy of the economically strong' (Tawney 1964, 166, 168).
Let us now turn to socialism. The dominant model of socialism in the twentieth century, albeit one that was repeatedly challenged in the name of socialism itself, is characterised by (1) state direction of the economy on the basis of (2) public (state) ownership of productive assets. So defined, socialism will also raise concerns for the republican democrat. He/she fears that such a system will generate its own inequalities of control over the means of production and, as a result, dependency and subordination not unlike that of a capitalist system - indeed, possibly much worse. Domination by the capitalist is replaced with domination by the bureaucrat. Leon Trotsky identified the threat of domination in such a system when he wrote in his critique of Stalinism: 'In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.'9 This concern prompted many currents on the left - anarchism, syndicalism, Guild Socialism, elements of the New Lefts of the 1950s and 1960s - to reach for an alternative model of socialism.
Republican democracy is particularly sceptical, indeed suspicious, of the technocratic tradition within socialist thought. This tradition emphasizes the supposed anarchy and irrationality of unregulated capitalist production and the advantages that will supposedly come from replacing this anarchy with rational, orderly planning. The problem of state power tends to be posed as a problem of how to facilitate the smooth management of society by experts. All too easily, in the republican democrat view, this emphasis leads to a weakening of the mechanisms and political culture necessary to protect the citizen from arbitrary state power.
A related concern is that socialist thought gives such a primacy to economic considerations that it often fails to come to terms with basic, permanent problems of political power. The state will not, in fact, 'wither away' at some point in the future. State power is always open to abuse. Even if those holding power are well intentioned, one is not free if one cannot discuss and meaningfully contest their decisions. In the absence of such discussion and contestation, abuse will, over time, become a near certainty. Some socialists, such as the Bolsheviks, have shown a fateful and fatal naivety on such questions. The experience of Marxism-Leninism is, one might say, a terrible testimony to what happens when socialist thought is disconnected from republican common-sense.10
If republican democracy is, therefore, critical of capitalism and the historically dominant model of socialism, does this mean it is just a form of social democracy, the historical compromise between the two opposing systems? The answer is yes and no. If social democracy is understood as an attempt to advance the revolutionary values of liberty, equality and fraternity within the framework of a society which retains a large degree of market allocation and private ownership, then republican democracy certainly is a form of social democracy. Nevertheless, it is important to underscore some points of difference between republican democracy and the practice of social democracy as it developed in Britain and other advanced capitalist countries after World War Two. We may note two important differences here: the republican focus on ownership and the republican focus on participatory democracy.
In thinking about an alternative to capitalism, one radical strain of republican democratic thinking has looked to some form of 'property-owning democracy' (Meade 1964, Rawls 1999, 2001, Sandel 1995, Dagger 2005). The picture is of a society in which productive assets are widely distributed, a market economy with (some) private ownership but without the proletarian condition.11 This emphasis on the distribution of privately owned wealth marks a point of difference with post-war social democracy. The philosopher John Rawls points towards this difference when he draws a contrast between the ideas of property-owning democracy and 'welfare-state capitalism':
*… the background institutions of property-owning democracy,
with its system of (workably) competitive markets, tries to disperse the
ownership of wealth and capital, and thus to prevent a small part of society
from controlling the economy and indirectly political life itself. Property-owning
democracy avoids this, not by redistributing income to those with less at
the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread
ownership of productive assets and human capital...at the beginning of each
period … The idea is not simply to assist those who lose out through accident
or misfortune (although this must be done), but instead to put all citizens
in a position to manage their own affairs and to take part in social cooperation
on a footing of mutual respect under appropriately equal conditions (Rawls
1999, p.xv; see also 242-251.)*
It should be emphasized that the difference here is much more at the level of practice than theory. For in fact post-war social democrats, in the British context at least, were very interested in and supportive of policies associated with property-owning democracy. As Ben Jackson has recently shown, the Labour 'revisionists' of the 1950s and 1960s saw such policies as central to the next stage in the struggle for an egalitarian society, building on (but not substituting for) the achievements of the welfare state and full employment (Jackson 2005 and forthcoming). They discussed new and more progressive forms of wealth taxation; measures to assist new, small savers; new forms of public ownership; and the further development of the cooperative sector. However, this particular aspect of revisionist theory did not have much impact on policy.
As the above passage from Rawls makes clear, one motivation for property-owning democracy is to prevent the control of political life by an economic elite. Related to this, the republican democrat will be concerned not only with the distribution of capital but with how popularly owned capital is effectively controlled. One striking feature of contemporary capitalism is the extent to which the control of popularly owned capital, such as pension funds, is in fact in the hands of a narrow business elite (Blackburn 2001). While the republican democrat will not wish to pass control of these funds to state bureaucrats, she will be receptive to proposals to democratize fund management. What is at stake here is not simply democracy in the control of the funds themselves. The power to control investment is a hugely important strategic power in society. The threat of an investment strike or capital flight is one that places governments in capitalist societies under real constraints. Putting the control of investment flows under genuine popular control is, therefore, an essential step towards a genuinely democratic polity (Cohen 1989, Blackburn forthcoming)
A second difference between republican democracy and post-war social democracy concerns the value placed on participatory democracy. As David Marquand has observed, the main theorists of post-war social democracy in Britain were influenced by 'elitist' theories of democracy of the kind expounded by Joseph Schumpeter (Schumpeter 1943). On the elitist view, what makes a polity democratic is that political elites compete through periodic, open elections. Such a polity requires a reasonable degree of participation in these elections by the bulk of ordinary citizens, but little or no participation beyond this. Indeed, such participation might well be undesirable. Post-war social democrats such as Tony Crosland and Hugh Gaitskell broadly shared this view (see also Jackson, forthcoming). In part this may have been a reaction against the intense calls for service and sacrifice of the 1940s. But it also in part reflected the technocratic strain in Fabian socialism with its built-in preference for expert decision-making. It was, after all, that consummate revisionist, Douglas Jay, who made the infamous remark about 'the man in Whitehall' knowing best.
There are a number of reasons to think that participation in collective decision-making is more important than the elitist perspective claims. First, participation may be important for informational reasons. If public policy is to be effective in achieving its goals, then policy-makers might well need to know something about local conditions and needs. Popular participation in policy design can obviously help to provide such information and so make for more effective policy (Wainwright 2003). A related point is that it is frequently difficult for the state to combine the need for regulation with the need for flexibility to local conditions. In such situations, it makes sense for the state to concentrate on establishing processes of decision-making in which local actors can come together to make specific rules within broad guidelines defined by the state (Cohen and Rogers 1994, Cohen and Sabel 1998). Imperfect information requires the state to delegate decision-making down, potentially drawing more citizens into decision-making processes.
Second, participation can be important to ensure that policy has legitimacy. Take decisions about how to allocate scarce resources between alternative health-care needs. Given the fact of scarcity, some form of 'rationing' is inevitable. This is, moreover, an area where technocracy simply breaks down: at the bottom of the allocation decisions there typically lie moral conflicts which admit of no single rational solution (Daniels and Sabin 1997). In such a situation there is obvious merit in seriously involving the citizens who stand to be affected in the making of these decisions.
Third, as Tocqueville and Mill argued, participation can have important educative effects. According to Tocqueville, democratic societies have an innate tendency towards 'individualism' in which people withdraw from public life and public concerns and become focused on and concerned for only their own immediate family and friends (Tocqueville 2003, 587). But it might be difficult to sustain a just or free society against such a background of a politically passive, disengaged citizenry. One way to combat the danger of individualism, he argues, is to design political arrangements so as to draw people into participation in collective decision-making and associational life. This will increase their sense of interdependency and their willingness to consider the interests of others. In the language of civic republicanism, participation in these ways helps to cultivate the civic virtue on which a just and free society ultimately depends. Contemporary students of 'social capital', such as Robert Putnam, have made similar arguments (Putnam 2000, especially 412-413, Freitag 2006).
Fourth, participation is important because of its power effects. As the level of popular organization and political participation changes in a society, so too does the balance of power within it, and, hence, the kind of policies that become politically feasible (see Skocpol and Fiorina 1999, for a discussion of this point in the context of US political history). The major institutions of post-war social democracy - the welfare state, electoral democracy itself - were not simply the result of reforms handed down by enlightened politicians and bureaucrats. They were the result of actions of political elites who were responding to configurations of forces and pressures in the wider society. Not least, of course, they were responding to the pressures of organized labour. The prospects for social democracy therefore depend on the extent to which social democratic politicians act within a context shaped by wider, popularly-based social movements which can bring to bear a countervailing pressure to those inevitably exerted by business and other elites.
3. Elaborating republican
democracy
Let us now explain how the chapters of this book help elaborate this ideal
of republican democracy. The book is divided into four sections. This and
the next chapter constitute an introductory section setting out the broad
philosophical outlines of republican democracy. There then follow three sections
entitled 'Liberty', 'Participation' and 'The Common Good', which examine particular
commitments of republican democracy in more detail. There is, of course, no
strict separation between the commitments to liberty, participation and the
common good; they are all interrelated on a republican view. But the division
is helpful in marking the distinct points of emphasis in the various chapters.
In Chapter 2, David Marquand provides an overview of republican themes in British political thought. This helps to situate what we are attempting in this book in terms of the wider progressive tradition within British politics. However, Marquand's analysis also lays down a challenge. He emphasises how demanding the republican conception of democratic politics is in terms of the levels and quality of civic engagement it requires. Later contributions to the book, particularly those in the 'Participation' section, can be seen as offering a response to Marquand's challenge. However, the challenge Marquand sets is an important one, and one should not assume complacently that it is easily met.
Chapters 3-7 explore the commitment to 'Liberty'. In Chapter 3, Adam Tomkins continues Marquand's analysis of the role of republican thinking in British political thought, identifying the centrality of republican thinking to the emergence of the modern British constitution. Tomkins argues, however, that the republican character of the British political system remains impaired by the strong prerogative powers of the executive (acting formally in the name of the Crown), which we see manifested, for example, in decisions to go to war. Tomkins argues for a range of new constitutional reforms to make Parliament a truly sovereign body in British politics and to enhance the independence of Members of Parliament in holding governments to account in the name of the people.
In Chapter 4, Ian Loader and Neil Walker confront the argument that, in a world beset with terrorist threats, citizens must accept a 'trade off' in which their civil liberties are curtailed in order to enhance their security. Without denying that there can be tension between liberty and security, Loader and Walker argue that contemporary discussion and policy is driven by an overly narrow conception of 'security'. Security is not helpfully viewed as a matter of receiving ironclad protection from possible eruptions of criminal violence. Security is better understood in terms of a capacity to feel at home in one's social world, a complex matter which depends not only on state protection in the conventional sense but on the broader structure of community relations. Security in this sense requires a much more inclusive and participatory style of policy-making backed by a firm foundation of civil liberties.
Chapters 5-7 then examine the prospects for liberty in the economic sphere. In Chapter 5, Nien-hê Hsieh provides a theoretical analysis of how a republican polity can prevent domination in the workplace. His argument places particular emphasis on creating institutions of representation and contestation for workers within the workplace (such as elected representatives on the directing bodies of companies and works councils to bring labour into the task of managing the workplace). A complementary approach, also acknowledged in Hsieh's analysis, is to enhance the power of workers to exit particular firms. In Chapter 6, Rajiv Prabhakar explores one way this might be done: through policies to assure each citizen a personal endowment of capital. In Chapter 7, Simon Birnbaum and David Casassas discuss another option: payment to all citizens of a universal and unconditional income grant. In many respects, the two proposals are very similar. However, one interesting difference of opinion emerges between the two chapters. Both chapters agree that a republican conception of economic citizenship emphasizes the civic value of social contribution as well as individual liberty. For Prabhakar this potentially tells in favour of introducing some degree of conditionality into universal grant programmes, e.g., restricting use of a capital grant to specific, productive purposes (such as education, training, or setting up a business). By contrast, Birnbaum and Casassas argue for the complete unconditionality of universal grants. In their view, this is essential if the grants are genuinely to underpin individual freedom and, in the process, facilitate a form of citizen activism that carries into all spheres of social life and not only the market-place (important as this is).
Chapters 8-12 explore the commitment to 'Participation'. In Chapter 8, Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright discuss the possibilities and prospects of new forms of 'empowered participatory governance' in which citizens come together in local participatory fora to deliberate and develop real policy in areas of concern such as the allocation of a local budget or the determination of educational or policing priorities. Without substituting for the conventional institutions of representative government - which Tomkins, in Chapter 3, wishes to improve - these participatory fora, if well designed, offer both improved policy outcomes and a deepening of democratic practice in society. In Chapter 9, Catherine Needham further examines the idea of citizen participation in public service provision. Needham helpfully distinguishes a range of different ideas that come into play here. She argues against some notions of participation, but defends 'coproduction' as a model which has the potential to incorporate citizens into the design and delivery of public services without compromising important values like universality and equity of access. Chapters 8 and 9 are highly complementary, and the reader might also consider how the picture of democratic practice they present links with the strategy for advancing security set out by Loader and Walker in Chapter 4. To what extent do they also persuasively address Marquand's concern (in Chapter 2) about the demandingness of citizen participation?
In Chapter 10, Ricardo Blaug excavates and discusses the relevance of a practice common to the city states of the ancient world: the practice of holding political leaders accountable for their performance at the end of their time in office. Would Tony Blair have taken the UK into the recent Iraq war if he had known that he would be held to account for this decision once he left office? Blaug considers how contemporary democracies might develop new, participatory institutions to hold politicians and corporations to account by scrutinising their performance and passing a deliberated judgment on it. The sanctions imposed by such bodies would be essentially symbolic, but nevertheless could help render leaders and power-holders more accountable to those they are supposed to serve.
At a time of declining voter turnout and widespread cynicism about the political process, the republican ambition of active citizen engagement in politics and policy-making might seem especially utopian. It is important, therefore, that we take note of, and try to learn from, new ways in which citizens are organizing themselves to bring their latent power to bear in the political process. In Chapter 11, Catherine Howarth and Lina Jamoul discuss the case of London Citizens, a citizens-organizing initiative, or family of initiatives, which bring together a range of local organizations, such as faith groups and trade union branches, to develop common campaigning priorities in the London area. With a record of successful campaigning around issues such as the Living Wage, London Citizens may offer one model of how to reengage citizens - in particular, low-income, disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens - in political life and change the balance of pressures acting on elected politicians.
I conclude this section in Chapter 12 with a discussion of how the concern for citizen participation links with the politics of working-time. Echoing Marquand in Chapter 2, I argue that a deliberative model of democracy, of the kind republicans generally favour, does indeed make demands on people in terms of time and energy. This creates a possible tension with the market, which is also generally hungry for people's time and energy. I argue that exhortation to citizens to limit their working hours is unlikely to be effective and that there is a role for government in limiting working hours in the interest of advancing active citizenship.
Chapters 13-15 explore the commitment to 'The Common Good'. In Chapter 13, John Barry and Kimberly Smith take up the hugely important issue of the environment. They explore the affinities between civic republican and green political theory and argue for a mutually reinforcing synthesis of the two traditions as the form of politics best suited to handling our emerging environmental crisis. To a considerable extent, a green politics must be a republican politics: a politics that sees a role for active and virtuous citizen engagement with matters of common concern, the preservation of the planet being surely the most fundamental common concern there is.
However, does the growing social diversity of many advanced capitalist countries, such as the UK, render collective action for common purposes ever more difficult, if not impossible? This is the issue which Nick Pearce takes up in Chapter 14. Pearce reviews the growing body of evidence concerning how increased ethnic and cultural diversity affects social solidarity, as expressed in the size of the welfare state. Pearce argues that the evidence does not support a simple determinism according to which more ethnic or cultural diversity translates into reduced social solidarity and a less generous welfare state. But he argues that there is a need to think about the kind of institutions and practices that can help to build and sustain solidarity in a more diverse society. We need to think more about how shared institutions build and maintain a sense of shared citizenship rather than treating this as something that will emerge spontaneously.
Alan Finlayson concludes the book, in Chapter 15, with a short essay on what he sees as the republican image of politics: an ongoing argument - the word 'conversation' seems too polite - about the common good. Finlayson is critical of some democratic theorists who, in his view, put forward an overly narrow conception of 'deliberation' as what democratic politics ought to be about. There ought to be more to political discussion than rational moral argument. What of the role of the imagination? Of the emotions? Of story-telling? In Finlayson's view, the republic just is the political space in which we agree to live by argument. The commitment to live together this way, with all the squawkiness it implies, becomes central to what our common good is. It is interesting to reconsider the earlier chapters on participation, such as those by Fung and Wright (Chapter 8) and Needham (Chapter 9) in terms of Finlayson's picture of what participation might look like. It is also interesting to consider how his picture links with the proposals of Loader and Walker, in Chapter 4, who emphasize the importance of genuinely inclusive political processes to creating security in its fuller sense.
4. Conclusion
If progressive politics is to move beyond its present impasse, it is essential
to clarify the basic ethical and social vision which it serves. It is in this
spirit that we present the idea of republican democracy.
The vision is not of a utopia, of a society which fully realizes the values of liberty, equality and 'fraternity' which have historically inspired progressive politics. But it is an ambitious vision nevertheless. It pictures an active state working to disperse property and increase the accountability of decision-makers throughout society. At the same time, as part of the process of dispersing power and enhancing accountability, the nature of the state itself is transformed by greater citizen participation in and around policy-making. We should not want a state that swallows up society, but nor should we reconcile ourselves to the neo-conservative vision of a market society (in which the market swallows up society). The challenge is to put both the state and the market in their place so as to build what we may call a citizen society.
Notes
1. See Elkin (2006), Miller (2000), Mouffe (1993), Nabulsi (1999), Pettit
(1997), Sandel (1995), Skinner (1991), (1998), Stedman Jones (2004), Sunstein
(1988), Viroli (1995).
2. See Ackerman and Alstott (1999), Bowles and Gintis eds. (1998), Cohen and
Rogers eds. (1994), Cohen and Sabel (1998), Fung (2003), Fung and Wright eds.
(2003), Gutmann and Thompson (1996), Rawls (1993), (2001), Van Parijs (1995).
3. Publications from the project include Cohen and Rogers eds. (1994), Roemer
ed. (1996), Bowles and Gintis eds. (1998), Fung and Wright eds. (2003) and
Ackerman, Alstott and Van Parijs eds. (2006). For more information about the
project and forthcoming publications, see http://www.havenscenter.org/realutopias/.
4. See in particular Bordeau and Merrill eds. (2007).
5. This is the approach adopted by Richard Dagger in a recent article on 'republican
political economy' and I am much indebted to his analysis here. See Dagger
(2006).
6. See especially Cohen (1997), Gutmann and Thompson (1996), Rawls (1993),
Sunstein (1988) and Young (2000).
7. Rousseau writes in his Discourse on Inequality that 'the worst thing that
can happen in human affairs is to find oneself living at the mercy of another'.
See Rousseau 1984, 125.
8. The concern with public spiritedness links with the idea of patriotism.
Some argue that there is a distinctively republican tradition of thinking
about patriotism, and national identity more broadly, that is by no means
narrowly nationalist or chauvinist (Viroli 1995, Nabulsi 1999). For the republican
patriot, patriotism is a love of one's country as a home of liberty. It does
not preclude respect and, indeed, sympathy for patriotisms focused on other
countries as homes of a common liberty (see especially Nabulsi 1999, 177-240).
9. During the Civil War period Trotsky was himself a strong advocate of the
militarization of economic life. For helpful discussion, see Knei-Paz 1978,
263-269.
10. I do not say that the Marxist tradition as a whole suffers from this problem.
In particular, we should make an exception for Rosa Luxemburg. Her superlative
essay on the Russian Revolution, published posthumously, displays a sensitivity
to basic political problems that is completely lacking in the work of Lenin.
See Luxemburg 2004.
11. Some republican thinkers, such as Rousseau, have also seen a role for
public ownership. Rousseau's emphasis, however, is on using public ownership
for public finance purposes rather than to achieve state direction of the
economy, an idea which is echoed in the work of recent economic thinkers such
as James Meade (Meade 1989).
Stuart White teaches political theory at Jesus College Oxford, and is currently Director of the Public Policy Unit at Oxford University. He is the author of Equality (Polity, 2006) and is on the editorial advisory board of Renewal: a journal of social democracy.