Lars Moen (University of Vienna), “The Republican Dilemma: Promoting Freedom in a Modern Society”

Oxford University Press, 2024

By Lars Moen

This book provides new insight into an important debate in contemporary political philosophy concerning conceptions of freedom and the relation between republicanism and liberalism. Republicanism is presented as an attractive alternative to prominent liberal theories, and the republican conception of freedom as non-domination is considered more attractive than a negative liberal conception of freedom as non-interference. The book reveals important flaws in this widely accepted view. It challenges the claim that republican freedom is superior to liberal freedom by showing how the two gives us no different directives for how to promote freedom in a modern society. However, the book also suggests a way of making republican freedom a distinct ideal. ‘Comprehensive’ republican freedom demands citizens’ firm commitment to protecting their society against abuse of political power.

These arguments are developed within a novel framework for analyzing and comparing different conceptions of freedom. The framework has a scope and a robustness dimension. A conception’s position along the scope dimension represents the extent to which it is compatible with interference. The more types of interference are considered to make a person unfree, the greater is the scope of that conception of freedom. So, if the conception implies that you are made unfree whenever someone interferes with you, this conception has maximal scope. The robustness dimension, on the other hand, indicates the extent to which a conception demands protection against interference. Robustness is measured in terms of absence of interference under different possible social circumstances defined by different profiles of individuals’ preferences.

Liberal freedom and republican freedom differ in terms of both scope and robustness. Liberal freedom has greater scope, since it takes any kind of interference to make you unfree, while republican freedom takes interference compatible with people’s common interests not to make anyone unfree. Republican freedom, however, has greater robustness, since it, unlike liberal freedom, requires protection against interference, and not just the absence of interference. The greater scope of liberal freedom actually implies lesser robustness, while the greater robustness of republican freedom implies lesser scope. This is evident in the simple observation that protecting individuals against each other’s interference necessarily involves interference, as it means preventing people from interfering with one another in whatever way is deemed incompatible with freedom.

The fruitfulness of this two-dimensional framework becomes apparent when we explore and compare the institutional requirements for promoting the ideals of republican and liberal freedom. Philip Pettit, the main proponent of republicanism in contemporary political philosophy, argues that republican freedom demands more robust institutional provisions of the resources and protection citizens need to exercise the basic liberties, and thus be able to pursue their personal ends, than does liberal freedom. At a first glance, Pettit’s view might seem obviously correct. After all, as reflected in its position on the robustness dimension, republican freedom requires institutions that protect citizens’ common interests, including their ability to effectively pursue their personal ends in life. Liberal freedom, on the other hand, requires merely that individuals experience no interference, and is therefore possible without institutional protection. Liberal freedom therefore appears to fail to demand institutions that reliably ensure individuals’ ability to lead meaningful lives without fear of unwanted interference.

But a key part of the book is to show why this view is incorrect. When we consider how to promote liberal freedom in a society, the view of republican freedom as a distinct and more attractive ideal becomes problematic. Judgments of what institutions will promote people’s freedom are shown to be inseparable from judgments of how free these people are under different institutional arrangements. And the two-dimensional framework shows us why this is so. The scope restriction on republican freedom correlates with a view of common interests virtually indistinguishable from that of John Rawls’s political liberalism. That is, republicans see common interests as the interests shared by individuals willing to treat everyone as a free and equal member of the society. More substantively, these interests are, as in Rawls’s theory, the interests in institutional provision of the resources everyone needs to effectively exercise the basic liberties. The restricted scope of republican freedom represents the view that interference involved in securing this institutional provision does not make individuals unfree. The problem for the republican critique of liberal freedom and liberal institutions is that such interference turns out to be necessary also for promoting liberal freedom.

Republicans might still insist that their freedom concept demands that institutional provisions for the basic liberties be more robust. But here the two-dimensional framework again demonstrates its usefulness by showing how such a demanding robustness requirement is actually incompatible with the scope of republican freedom. For republican freedom to require more robust institutional protection than is needed for promoting liberal freedom, its scope must be further restricted. That is, more kinds of interference must be treated as compatible with freedom, since protection itself involves interference. And that means the common interests must be understood to constitute a smaller subset of the set of all interests existing in the society. In particular, these interests must be compatible with a high level of political participation necessary for making sure institutions robustly promote these interests.

This scope restriction for the sake of greater robustness puts republicanism at odds with the pluralism that exist in modern societies. It becomes an actual alternative to liberalism, but its attractiveness as a theory for a modern society therefore fades. What I call the republican dilemma thus becomes apparent: Republicans can remain committed to preserving the pluralism of modern societies, but then they contribute little to political philosophy not already provided by existing liberal theories. Alternatively, they can insist on a distinctly high level of robust protection, but their theory is then no attractive alternative to a liberal theory promoting liberal freedom.

Pettit is set on making his theory suitable for a modern society, and therefore takes the first horn of the dilemma. But to get their desired break from liberalism and liberal freedom, republicans must take the second horn. The book explores what taking this alternative route would involve for republicans. It leads to non-liberal republicanism and a distinctly republican contribution to political philosophy. While implausible as a theory for all-things-considered institutional design, this more ‘comprehensive’ form of republicanism can nonetheless be used for evaluating institutions and citizens’ behavior on the political arena. Particularly, comprehensive republicanism can illuminate how letting citizens pursue a diverse range of personal ends comes at the cost of weaker protection against abuse of political power.