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E. P. Thompson's classic The Making of the English Working Class is arguably a work of implicit political theory as well as history (Thompson, 1963). Written at a time when Thompson had made a decisive rupture with the Communist Party, Part 1 of the book can be read as an effort to reconnect with an alternative political tradition. This alternative revolves around a radical form of republicanism, excited by the aspirations of the French Revolution and tutored by Tom Paine. Its defining commitments are political and social equality, public-spirited participation in democratic politics, and an emerging theory of social rights to limit economic inequality. In the 1960s and 1970s, with Marxism in ideological ascendancy, Thompson's critical recovery of radical republicanism may have struck some on the left as anachronistic. But Thompson was ahead of his time. Gareth Stedman Jones's recent book, An End to Poverty? , celebrates enthusiastically the ideas of late eighteenth-century republicans such as Paine and Condorcet (Stedman Jones, 2004). And this is just one expression of an ongoing revival of interest in something, or some things, called 'republicanism'. Bernard Crick and David Marquand are long-standing proponents of 'republicanism', joined recently by Jonathan Freedland, Will Hutton and David Blunkett (Crick, 1962, 2000; Hutton, 1995; Marquand, 1997; Freedland, 1998; Blunkett, 2001). Within academic political theory 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, Cass Sunstein and Maurizio Viroli, to name just some (Sunstein, 1988; Skinner, 1991, 1998; Mouffe, 1993; Sandel, 1995; Viroli, 1995; Pettit, 1997; Nabulsi, 1999; Miller, 2000; Elkin, 2006). The Spanish Socialist Party was so impressed with the work of one of these theorists, Pettit, that it has invited him to make an interim assessment of the Socialist government's success in advancing republican goals.
It is hard not to see this republican turn as, in part, a symptom of the drawn out ideological crisis of the left. Is republicanism the 'big idea' for which the left has been searching? To answer this question we need to consider: What is republicanism? In what ways does it seem relevant to contemporary social democrats? What are its limitations?
Defining republicanism
It is difficult to define republicanism. The popular equation of republicanism with opposition to monarchy is inadequate as not all republicans historically have opposed monarchy, and those who have do not necessarily see this as all there is to republicanism. Past thinkers 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 saying the same thing. Similarly, contemporary political theorists do not use the term in the same way. Rather than attempt a tight definition, then, it is more appropriate to try to identify the main ideas associated with republicanism. 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. 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 (Dagger, 2006).
A first idea is that of the common good . In its original sense, a republic is a political system which serves the good of all citizens, as opposed to the good of a ruling individual or clique. In this sense, a republic might be a monarchy, aristocracy or democracy (rule of the one, few or many) and still be a republic because its rulers serve the ' res publica ' (Wootton, 2006).
Most thinkers in the republican tradition are, however, by no means indifferent to the form of the political system. They argue that some kinds of system are more likely to promote the common good. One idea which recurs is that political processes must be deliberative (Sunstein, 1988). Laws and policies must emerge from a process of reasoned justification by citizens in open discussion with one another. A major concern within contemporary political philosophy is to identify what sort of things can or should count as eligible reasons for the justification of laws and policies, as reasons that can legitimately be appealed to in deliberation. According to some accounts, eligible reasons must be ones that satisfy certain evidence-based criteria (so that merely appealing to the commands of an allegedly divine text to justify laws that will apply to others, including non-believers, is not an eligible reason). They must also satisfy moral criteria. For example, they should not assert the moral inferiority of some citizens (Gutmann and Thompson, 1996). Since appropriate deliberation is by no means an inevitable, spontaneous product of political association, political and social institutions must be consciously designed to promote it.
Historically, republican thinkers are not democrats. Aristotle, Cicero and 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 , drawing on writers such as Rousseau and Paine for inspiration. However, following Madison, Tocqueville and Mill, there is typically a recognition of the danger of the 'tyranny of the majority' under democratic conditions. Thus 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'.
What is the common good that the state exists to promote? One theme that has become central to contemporary republicanism is that of liberty . The common good is, centrally, 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 liberty itself is: liberty as non-domination (Pettit, 1997; Skinner, 1998). On a standard view, liberty consists in the absence of force or coercion. But the absence of actual force or 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. On this view, then, the republican state must create the conditions that prevent citizens from dominating each other in social and economic life. In addition, the republican state must itself be structured so that it has a non-dominating relationship to its subjects. In Pettit's account, this requirement takes us back to the idea of a deliberative and contestatory democracy sketched above.
A further theme in republican writing concerns the character of citizens. A citizen is not merely someone with a particular legal status, but someone who has and acts from certain civic virtues. One virtue is participation in public decision-making . For some philosophers, such as Aristotle on one reading, 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, 1991). But of course participation must be public-spirited, and hence another recurring issue for republican thinkers is how to foster public-spiritedness. This 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, pp177-240).
Finally, republican thinkers have given thought to the social and economic conditions that either constitute or promote the common good. There is, in particular, a concern to moderate inequality of wealth (not just income, but property). This concern has a number of sources. One 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 republican regime 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, [1762] 1994, p87).
The relevance of republicanism
Having clarified what republicanism is, let us consider what contemporary social democrats might have to learn from it. I shall discuss four contributions here: the emphasis on limiting arbitrary power; the emphasis on participation; the insight into the relationship between freedom and property; and the resources that republicanism provides for conceiving (or reconceiving) national identity.
First, republicanism provides a timely reminder that one of the great evils of political life is subjection to arbitrary power, including the arbitrary power of the state. To this end, republicanism calls for a robust constitutionalism to define and limit the state's power. We need to be reminded of this precisely because, post-9/11, states are tempted increasingly to extend their authority in ways that give them (greater) arbitrary power. A prime example would be the anti-terrorism laws that allowed the executive to imprison foreigners in Britain without trial for an indefinite period of time. It is significant that the Law Lords declared these measures to be contrary to the principles of a society governed by the rule of law.
Developing this point, the republican focus on non-domination and on open, deliberative forms of democratic rule reminds us of the critical importance of procedural goods in political life, goods that have to do with the way decisions are made and goals are pursued. Political proceduralists believe that there are standards of fairness, integrity, publicity, accountability - all of which reflect an ethos of respect for the citizen - that must constrain how governments and movements proceed politically. Proceduralists stand opposed by political consequentialists for whom only the outcomes matter in political life. Although proceduralism is one of the key tenets of democratic socialism, one that distinguishes it theoretically (if not always fully in practice) from Leninism, New Labour has in recent years seemed ill at ease with this tenet. Particularly in relation to the Iraq war and its aftermath, New Labour has evolved towards a 'Leninism of the Centre', a political project animated by a crudely consequentialist conception of political life in which procedural goods are ignored - or given only as much lip-service as seems necessary within the constraints of our political culture. Republicanism offers a powerful antidote to this perspective.
Second, social democrats may have something to learn from the republican emphasis on widespread citizen participation in public decision-making. Some British social democrats, such as Tony Crosland, have in the past taken a dismissive attitude towards popular political participation (Crosland, 1956). It is questionable whether this attitude can be sustained. A number of commentators have argued that societies like Britain and the USA show a pronounced, possibly growing, tendency towards what Tocqueville calls 'individualism': 'a calm and considered feeling which persuaded each citizen to cut himself off from his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of his family and friends in such a way that he thus creates a small group of his own and willingly abandons society at large to its own devices' (Tocqueville, [1835] 2003, p587). A perception of economic self-sufficiency, based on moderate wealth, generates a sense that one really needs one's fellow citizens very little. The citizen loses a sense of him/herself as part of an interdependent project of social cooperation. This hardly seems a promising basis on which to sustain any social democratic project.
Tocqueville argues, however, that democratic societies can mitigate the problem by constructing state power in a way that pushes the individual into participation in public decision-making:
As soon as communal affairs are treated as belonging to all, every man realizes that he is not as separate from his fellows as first imagined and that it is often vital to help them in order to gain their support ... When the public is in charge, every single man feels the value of public goodwill and seeks to court it by attracting the regard and affection of those amongst whom he is to live.
Many of the emotions which freeze and shatter men's hearts are then forced to withdraw and hide away in the depths of their souls. Pride conceals itself; scorn dares not show its face. Egoism is afraid of itself.
([1835] 2003, 592)
Robert Putnam, the leading researcher into 'social capital', has echoed Tocqueville's view and there is some research to support it (Putnam, 2000, 412-413; Freitag, 2006). 1 If Tocqueville is correct, then this suggests one reason why social democrats ought to be interested in various recent proposals to create new, widely dispersed sites of genuinely popular public decision-making, for example in relation to public services (Cohen and Sabel, 1997; Fung, 2003; Fung and Wright, 2003; Needham, 2003).
Third, republicanism reminds us of some reasons why the traditional social democratic commitment to limiting economic inequality matters. It matters because of the potentially corrupting effect of extreme wealth on deliberative democratic politics, and because of the direct threat that lack of wealth can pose to personal liberty. At the same time, republicanism arguably shifts the traditional focus of social democratic concern by bringing back to the fore the question of property ownership. In a society with a market economy, a person's ability to stand as an independent being, free from domination by others, crucially depends on her ability to command an income stream that is not at the discretion of an employer, spouse or welfare bureaucrat. This can be achieved through the wider dispersion of property. 2 Hence, republicanism points us beyond the horizon of welfare state capitalism towards what John Rawls calls a 'property-owning democracy' (Dagger, 2006; see also Meade, 1989; Rawls, 2001). This is an economic system in which the state acts not only to alleviate the effects of inequalities in capital but to limit these inequalities in the first place. This might involve inheritance and/or wealth taxes; measures to promote wider share ownership; and, following Paine, 'citizens' inheritance' schemes which seek to endow all citizens on maturity with their own capital (Paine, [1797] 1987; Ackerman and Alstott, 1999; Paxton and White with Maxwell, 2006).
Fourth, republicanism may have something to contribute to discussions of national identity. In societies that are experiencing growing religious and cultural diversity, it is arguably important to develop a sense of shared national identity to underpin the kind of collective action that social democrats favour (Miller, 1995; Pearce, 2004). But what is to be the basis for this shared national identity? Taking the emerging discussion of 'Britishness' as a case in hand, we cannot (certainly ought not to) construct a sense of Britishness based on ethnicity, majority religion, or the celebration of an imperial history. We need to find an alternative. The idea of republican patriotism is of relevance here. Britishness might be understood in terms of adherence to shared values such as political equality, deliberation and liberty as non-domination. If these seem a rather amorphous basis for a common identity, a deeper sense of identity might derive from embodying them in a written constitution. As in the USA, a written constitution can provide a shared framework of principle within which political issues can be framed and discussed and a common (if always contested) ethical identity asserted. We can give concrete meaning to these values by reference to 'our' history. It is a question of what episodes we choose, as citizens, to regard as ethically significant in defining who 'we' truly are, or aspire to be, as a people or family of peoples. We choose to see certain events as shameful, a falling away from who 'we' are at our best, and others as exemplifying (always imperfectly) who 'we' are. And this 'we' is not fixed, but can expand to allow new episodes and new interpretations. In this way we can build up an inclusive 'narrative' of Britishness based on a republican reading of history, one that combines a celebration of democratic and anti-imperialist struggles.
Limitations of republicanism
I have indicated some ways in which republicanism is arguably of relevance to social democrats today. However, it is important also to consider what the limitations of republicanism might be.
A first question concerns the relationship between republicanism and liberalism (see also Patten, 1996; Larmore, 2004). Many self-designated republicans like to draw an unfavourable contrast between their republicanism and an ideological opponent called 'liberalism'. A good example is Michael Sandel (Sandel, 1995). Sandel argues that liberalism is committed to a 'neutral state' which, out of respect for individual freedom, may not act to shape citizen character in any way. But since the survival of the liberal state ultimately depends on citizens acquiring certain virtues, this makes the liberal state a precarious, potentially self-destructive enterprise. Against this supposedly liberal philosophy, allegedly epitomised in the work of liberals such as John Rawls, Sandel proposes a 'civic republican' philosophy. Liberty is understood in terms of participation in democratic government and the state is given the role of acting to promote the sort of character that citizens will need to participate effectively. However, Sandel's argument rests on a misunderstanding of the idea of liberal neutrality (see also Farrelly, 1999). Liberal neutrality does not place an absolute prohibition on state action to promote character. Rather, it places a limit on the reasons that can be used to justify such action. If the reasons are related to securing justice, as the liberal understands it, then it can be legitimate for the state to promote specific virtues, such as dispositions to support equality of opportunity or religious toleration. To return to an earlier example, Tocqueville's concern to temper 'individualism' through participation in local government is one that can readily be accepted by liberals if 'individualism' would otherwise undermine the willingness of citizens to support measures that are essential to (say) equal opportunity.
If liberalism can and should incorporate some republican insights, however, the reverse also holds: republicanism can and should incorporate some liberal insights. This is particularly true as regards the republican state's stance towards cultural and religious pluralism. French republicanism is often associated with a vehement support for the doctrine of 'laicité' and opposition to the expression of religious identity in 'public' spaces such as state schools. It is associated, more generally, with the idea of legal uniformity and opposition to the idea that groups ought to receive exemptions or other special treatment under the law based on their religious beliefs or cultural identity (for an overview, see Laborde, 2001). Now republicanism is certainly incompatible with a radical multiculturalism which devolves authority down to religious or cultural groups, allowing them to do their own thing subject only to a rule of peaceful co-habitation. Under this system, some groups might organise themselves internally in ways that violate liberty as non-domination. Or they might fail to provide the kind of education that is needed to sustain mutual respect and co-operation for republican ends across citizens of different religions. However, we should not infer from this that republicanism must stand opposed to all public recognition of religious difference. The republican state is, after all, not an end in itself. It exists to promote the common good, and the common good is, centrally, citizens' shared interest in liberty. One thing that the liberal tradition teaches us is that the freedom to act on religious conscience is a hugely important aspect of personal liberty. In general, it is important enough to warrant giving children a significant degree of freedom to dress at school in ways that express religious commitments. On occasion, it might also be important enough to justify religiously based exemptions from general laws. Acknowledging religious belief in these ways is not a retreat from republicanism, but an expression of republicanism understood in terms of securing the common good of liberty for all.
Another limitation of republicanism concerns economic equality. Some contemporary philosophers of republicanism take the view that economic inequality matters insofar as it affects political equality or liberty, understood as non-domination. But we should be wary of seeing these as the only reasons for caring about economic inequality. It is conceivable that we could achieve a state of affairs in which no individual is vulnerable to domination due to economic deprivation, and in which politics is insulated effectively from differences in wealth, but in which there is still a substantial degree of income or wealth inequality due to differences in individual talents over which the individuals have no control. This kind of 'brute luck' inequality is, I think, a matter for concern in its own right, and not only if it leads to political inequality or domination (White, 2006, chapter 4).
Last, but very far from least, a fuller discussion would consider how far republicanism can assist us in getting to grips with ecological challenges. Here we should note a division within thinkers associated with republicanism between, roughly speaking, non- or anti-commercialists such as Rousseau, and later commercial republicans such as Paine. The former are sceptical of the benefits of economic growth and can be seen as offering an implicitly 'green' social vision premised on a general moderation of wants. The latter tend to see economic growth as essentially good, one aspect of human progress, and accordingly are less concerned with the moderation of wants. If republicanism is to assist us in addressing ecological dangers, it may be that we have to take a leaf or two from the older republican book (Barry, 1999). 3
Conclusion: a moderately big idea
We began by asking whether republicanism is the left's 'big idea'. To a point, my answer is 'No'. For a start, republicanism is not itself an idea at all, but a cluster of ideas that can be understood and combined in different ways (and combined with other ideas in different ways, and so on). Just because various contemporary theorists call themselves republican does not mean they are arguing for the same thing. Sometimes, they are arguing for opposing things. There is hence a need to distinguish between republicanisms and to assess their respective merits. There is a need also to avoid setting republicanism up in a contest against some other 'ism', such as liberalism or multiculturalism. The most plausible form of republicanism has to draw from liberalism (and, in so doing, will be more multiculturalist). Relatedly, social democrats need to be aware of how prominent philosophical accounts of republicanism do not fully capture egalitarian commitments. The integration of republican and ecological thinking is another area where work remains to be done.
Nevertheless, an adequate social democratic philosophy of the state should incorporate some basic republican ideas. These include the value of procedural goods in political life; the need for a wide participation of citizens in public decision-making; the importance of attending to inequality of wealth (as well as income); and a way of thinking about national identity based on republican values rather than ethnicity, religion or imperial history.
The historian Jose Harris tells us that: 'The opening address to one of the founding conferences of the Labour Representation Committee in 1902 ... cited Macaulay's account of the ancient Roman republic as a moral pattern for the Labour movement in the early twentieth century' (Harris, 1993, p248). We need not romanticise ancient Rome. But the idea of grounding social democracy in a republican conception of citizenship and the state is one we urgently need to rehabilitate.
Stuart White teaches at Jesus College, Oxford.
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Notes
1 There is less evidence than one might expect because researchers have only recently turned their attention from looking at how social capital affects government performance to looking rigorously at how political institutions affect social capital.
2 Payment by the state of an unconditional basic income ('citizen's income') would also contribute to liberty as non-domination (Casassas, 2006). Some proponents of 'property-owning democracy' argue for a combination of citizen's income and wealth dispersion (Meade, 1989).
3 I owe this point to Martin McIvor.
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