Beyond Liberalism? Political Theories of Republicanism and Democracy

SPS Seminar 1 st term 2017-2018 Beyond Liberalism? Political Theories of Republicanism and Democracy Organized by Rainer Bauböck and Matthew Hoye Tuesday 11:00 13:00, Seminar room 3, Badia Fiesolana Register online Contact: Monika.Rzemieniecka@eui.eu Today, when we think of citizenship, we think about individualism, rights, freedom as non-interference, and the state as the neutral protector of individual autonomy. That is, we think about citizenship through the prism of contemporary liberalism. These ideas were not always so widely accepted. Liberalism was once the language of radicals fighting for emancipation against entrenched power and deep-rooted philosophical and ideological systems. The genealogy of liberalism tracks a series of intellectual disputes, political crises, internal criticism, conceptual appropriations, rhetorical intensifications, problem solving, and institutional innovations. It was these battles philosophical and political that motivated liberalism. Classical liberalism say, from 1651 to 1848 did not only fight against political and religious absolutism but also against the much older republican and democratic traditions. Those latter battles were rather less pitched, and primarily about ethical priorities, the nature of freedom, social and political institutions, traditions, and ideologies. That history was one of productive mutual appropriation, inspired criticism, and ultimately of revolution and counter-revolution. The modern history of liberalism say, from 1848 to 1989 was an existential battle between liberalism, communism, and fascism. In the contemporary period say, from 1989 onwards liberalism is hegemonic. Proof of the hegemony of liberalism is evident in our seemingly acrimonious debates. These debates appear to be fought between advocates of deeply antithetical positions, but on closer analysis they often seem to be about rather small philosophical differences. This means that liberalism has become rather ecumenical, and many contemporary debates seem to unfold internally to political liberalism. These debates are interesting in an academic sense, but it is often not clear what their analytical, normative, or policy purchase is. In this sense, there is a sharp contrast between

classical and modern liberalism, both of which were motivated by deep intellectual and political engagements. They spoke clearly and persuasively to the crises of their day. Which brings us to the puzzle that this class sets out to address: liberalism may be hegemonic, but it no longer appears to motivate citizens for political action as strongly as it used to. The point of this class is to think through the concept of citizenship again, with special emphasis on the republican and democratic traditions. That is, we will return to the founding debates and ask what was lost, what was gained, and what could be recovered. There are at least three reasons why we should look outside of our contemporary liberal tradition in order to rethink citizenship more broadly. First, historically, citizenship was not originally a liberal construct. Liberal citizenship is presently a rather passive mode of politics. But this wasn t always the case. Looking at the roots of the idea of citizenship outside of the constraints of modern liberal categories may tell us something about citizenship that we ve forgotten. Second, analytically, many of the contemporary political crises are crises born of the contradictions and limitations of contemporary liberalism, and it is not apparent that they can be productively thought through by way of liberal categories alone. The democratic and republican alternatives and the classical liberal alternatives may afford analytical insights otherwise not available to contemporary liberalism. Third, normatively, it is possible that by excavating older theories of democracy and republicanism we could discover new ways of thinking through our present predicaments. The class is organized as follows. Sessions 2-5 look at the shifting historical fortunes of democracy, republicanism, and liberalism by way of examining some of their signal theorists. These sessions are primarily meant to bring everyone up to speed on the canonical texts and to map out the conceptual contours of the pertinent debates. Sessions 6-10 will take up various conceptual and practical debates. This is a seminar, so students must come prepared for every class. Discussions will be structured by these questions: 1. Who is the author? 2. What is the political and ideological contexts wherein the text was engaging? 3. What are the core claims? How are they logically related? 4. What sociological and philosophical assumptions are being made? 5. What is the critique of citizenship? 6. What does this mean?! If any part of the text is unclear, point to it in class. It is likely that if you don t get it, none of us do. Come to class with questions. We ll figure it out together. This course is set up so as to facilitate participation by a diverse range of students with different interests and from different fields. We hope that you will incorporate your own studies into this class and we are very interested in having you contribute. There is room to modify or extend the readings. If your own research project overlaps with the topics listed in the syllabus, let us know and we will tweak a session to allow you (and the rest of us) to get the most out of it. If your topic could potentially overlap (topically, historically, methodologically) but presently doesn t, let us know and we ll find a way to incorporate your work. 2

Requirements: Participants who take the seminar for credit are expected: to read all the texts marked as required reading. Generally, required readings will not exceed 150 pages per week to prepare a reaction paragraph (1-2 pages) on the readings for each week and send it to the research assistant by Tue 10 am to read all reaction paragraphs and engage actively in discussions in class to introduce one seminar topic to the class on the basis of additional readings If you want to take the seminar for credit, you need to write a seminar paper of about 5000 words. Outlines of about 500 words must be sent until 5 December 2017. The full paper has to be submitted by 20 January 2018 to Monika.Rzemieniecka@eui.eu. If you want to audit the seminar without full participation, you need to register and do the reading for the units that you want to attend. 3

Table of Contents 3 October: (1) Introduction... 5 10 October: (2) Ancient Foundations: Contempt for democracy and elitist republicanism... 6... 6 17 October: (3) Citizenship and Classical Liberalism... 7... 7 Recommended Readings:... 7 Discussion topics:... 8 24 October: (4) Republics, Democracies, and Revolutions... 9... 9 31 October: (5) Contemporary Liberalism... 10... 10 Recommended Readings:... 10 7 November: (6) Freedom and Citizenship: Berlin, Arendt, Skinner and Pettit... 11... 11 Recommended Readings:... 11 14 November: (7) The Paradox of Non-Domination: Republican institutions or radical democracy?... 12... 12 Recommended Readings:... 12 21 November: (8) New Critiques of Privacy... 13... 13 28 November: (9) Global Justice without (Rawlsian) Banisters... 14... 14 Recommended Readings:... 14 5 December: (10) Citizenship, Denizenship and Alienage: Beyond liberal migration ethics?... 15... 15 Secondary Readings:... 15 4

3 October: (1) Introduction Each of the course instructors will give a short lecture that introduces the topic. We will then discuss course requirements and assign the task of introducing a class to participants taking the course for credit. 5

10 October: (2) Ancient Foundations: Contempt for democracy and elitist republicanism The purpose of this session it to review the enduring claims made in some of the foundational texts in the tradition. Herodotus, The Persian Wars, Volume II: Books 3-4, trans. A. D. Godley, Revised edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1921), paras. 80 2. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Martin Hammon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Pericles Funeral Oration (Book 2, 35-47) 12 pages. Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), book III, chapters 1-11; book IV, chapters 1-5, 8 & 9. Polybius, The Histories, Volume III: Books 5-8, ed. F. W. Walbank and Christian Habicht, trans. W. R. Paton, Revised (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Loeb Classical Library, 2011), 271-93 (11 pages). Josiah Ober, The Original Meaning of Democracy : Capacity to Do Things, Not Majority Rule, Constellations 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2008): 3 9. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, trans. James E. G. Zetzel (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 18-32, 46-54, 65-6, 75-7, 171-5 (38 pages). Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), Book 1, 2-10, 16-18,21,24, 34-6, 44, 52-55, 57-8. (25 pages) Recommended Readings: John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy: Controlling Elites with Ferocious Populism, American Political Science Review 95, no. 2 (2001): 297 313. Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy: Electoral and Athenian, PS: Political Science and Politics 26, no. 3 (September 1, 1993): 475 77. 6

17 October: (3) Citizenship and Classical Liberalism The evolution of ideas is never straightforward. Liberalism s story is perhaps stranger than most. Despite all appearances, the founding text of liberalism is Thomas Hobbes s Leviathan. This is strange for at least two reasons. First, Hobbes never made the claim himself. He was far more interested in undermining the democratic and republican traditions that preceded him and in establishing state power. Second, most liberals committed themselves to resisting Hobbes s political philosophy. However, it is for these same reasons that Leviathan is the base stone of the tradition. Because even when attacking Hobbes, they implicitly assumed the general parameters of his thought. The purpose of this session is to trace some of the founding battles of liberalism. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Revised Student Edition, ed. Richard Tuck, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chapters 13-7. John Locke, Locke: Two Treatises of Government Student Edition, ed. Peter Laslett, Student ed. edition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Book II, chapters 1-5, 9-11, 18-9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses, ed. Susan Dunn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), book 1 & 2; book 3, chapter IV-VII; book 4, chapter 1. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/991, chapters 1 & 2. Jeremy Bentham, Anarchical Fallacies; Being an Examination of the Declaration of Rights Issued during the French Revolution, in Nonsense upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man, ed. Jeremy Waldron (London: Methuen, 1988), pp 52-5. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 88-98. Recommended Readings: Daniel Lee, Popular Sovereignty in Early Modern Constitutional Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Duncan Bell, What Is Liberalism?, Political Theory 42, no. 6 (December 1, 2014): 682 715. David Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Quentin Skinner, Hobbes and the Purely Artificial Person of the State, Journal of Political Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1999): 1 29. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Hobbes and Civil Science, vol. III, III vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 7

Quentin Skinner, Hobbes on Representation, European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 2 (2005): 155 184. Richard Tuck, The Sleeping Sovereign: The Invention of Modern Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Discussion topics: What happens to democracy under Hobbes s watch? In some sense, he seems to be a radical democrat, as all legitimacy stems from the people no matter the regime type. Clearly, however no matter the regime type signals an essential neutering of democracy. What are Locke s signal criticisms of Hobbes? Where does Wollstonecraft stand in the genealogy of liberalism, democracy, and republicanism? What is the problem of the tyranny of the majority in Mill? What is (are?) the theories of freedom in Mill? Explain Mill s apparent endorsement of despotism. What is Bentham s critique? And what is Utilitarianism? 8

24 October: (4) Republics, Democracies, and Revolutions Plato was hostile towards democracy and Aristotle advocated a mixed regime because he was wary about the rule of the poor. For the Romans, the question of republican foundations was steeped in mythology and tradition, while day-to-day republican politics was a rather elite affair. Machiavelli put both radical democratic and elitist republican politics back on the agenda, but it would be left to the Dutch, English, American, and French revolutionaries to do the hard work of founding a new regime. We have seen how Hobbes responded to the first failed attempts at founding an English republic. We turn now to the two subsequent and successful revolutionary moments. Thomas Paine, Paine: Political Writings, ed. Bruce Kuklick (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp 24-30, 44-5, 171-83, 204-5. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 10, 14, 38-40; 42, 46-51. Thomas Jefferson, Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 42-4; 107-9; 225-6; 382-8; 593-8; 598-604; 606-9 [Madison to Jefferson]. Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson, Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chapter 4. 9

31 October: (5) Contemporary Liberalism The single most important work in contemporary liberal political philosophy is John Rawls s A Theory of Justice. Rawls resets the philosophical foundations of liberalism shifting it towards systemic and institutionalised conceptions of justice as fairness. In doing so, Rawls hoped to establish strong and universally acceptable foundations for the liberal tradition. Where liberalism had previously presupposed modes of republican and democratic legitimacy, Rawls allowed liberalism to stand autonomously, by showing how liberalism could produce its own foundational normative claims. Nozick stakes out the antithetical position starting from a rather ahistorical interpretation of Locke. In doing so, Nozick also exemplifies the extent to which the liberal tradition had unhitched itself from the democratic and republican traditions. It is at this juncture that the split between liberalism and libertarianism emerges. Friedrich A. von Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), selections. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), selections. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical, Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3 (1985): 223 51. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2013), selections. Recommended Readings: N.B. There is an endless secondary literature on these topics. However, participants would be better served by reading ahead and considering some of the applied liberal/libertarian critiques of migration ethics or global justice. That will give you a more practical understanding of these ideas. 10

7 November: (6) Freedom and Citizenship: Berlin, Arendt, Skinner and Pettit There is no better example of the hegemony of liberalism than the widespread presupposition freedom means not being interfered with. The striking feature of this claim is how functionally anti-democratic and anti-republican it is. Democracies are vessels of collective action, republics are vessels of collective law-making, both necessitate interference in the lives of individuals. The point of this session is to critically evaluate the meaning of freedom. Benjamin Constant, Political Writings, ed. Biancamaría Fontana (Cambridge University Press, 1988), The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 118 44. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York: The Viking Press, 1961), 143 72. Philip Pettit, On the People s Terms: A Republican Philosophy of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), Chapter 1. Quentin Skinner, On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 95 102. Recommended Readings: Skinner, Quentin. Liberty Before Liberalism, 1998. Bellamy, Richard. Republicanism, Democracy, and Constitutionalism. In Republicanism and Political Theory. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Why It Matters. London Review of Books. Honohan, Iseult. 2002. Civic Republicanism. London and New York: Routledge. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 11

14 November: (7) The Paradox of Non-Domination: Republican institutions or radical democracy? The core neorepublican claim is that freedom is neither simply non-interference, nor self-mastery and self-perfection. Instead, freedom is a question of non-domination, and thus a function of institutions. Although neorepublicans don t completely agree with Mill s claim that the worst form of tyranny is the tyranny of the majority, they certainly are concerned with the problem. Their solution has been to set up institutional checks which track the will of the people but dissuade the direct or unmediated influence of the people on government. By contrast, radical democratic theorists claim that institutions are always a source of unfreedom and, conversely, that democracy is a mode of political surplus which overwhelms institutions. For them, democracy starts where institutions end. However, both neo-republicans and radical democrats claim that the theory of freedom which they are defending is freedom as non-domination. Philip Pettit, Freedom as Antipower, Ethics, 1996, 576 604. Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, Revised ed. edition (New York: Verso, 2006), chapters 1-4. Miguel Abensour, Democracy Against the State: Marx and the Machiavellian Movement, trans. Max Blechman and Martin Breaugh (Cambridge: Polity, 2011). Introduction. Nadia Urbinati, Republicanism: Democratic or Popular?, The Good Society 20, no. 2 (2011): 157 169. John P. McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Chapter 1 (or skim over the McCormick text in APSR). Philip N. Pettit, Precis of the Argument of On the People s Terms, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18, no. 6 (November 2, 2015): 642 43. Miguel Vatter, Political Ontology, Constituent Power, and Representation, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18, no. 6 (November 2, 2015): 679 86. Philip Pettit, On the People s Terms: A Reply to Five Critiques, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 18, no. 6 (November 2, 2015): 687 96. Recommended Readings: Martin Breaugh et al., eds., Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Post-War France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). Michael Hardt, Jefferson and Democracy, American Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2007): 41 78. Warren Breckman, Adventures of the Symbolic: Post-Marxism and Radical Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 12

21 November: (8) New Critiques of Privacy The early-modern republicans emphasised the pragmatic core of republicanism. Today, neorepublicans assert that they are engaged in public political philosophy which overcomes the limitations of liberalism. Privacy offers a rather interesting test for neorepublicanism for various reasons. First, privacy is a quintessentially liberal phenomenon. It emerged in the 20 th century as a topic of concern that was forged in the language of liberalism. Second, the privacy-invasive powers which define our contemporary privacy concerns are unlike the forms of domination which have informed republicanism. Indeed, republicans have usually been far more concerned with securing publicity than in securing privacy. Nevertheless, it appears as though the idea of non-domination should be a powerful analytical category for thinking about privacy. The question for this class is: how? The readings for this class do not provide republican or democratic accounts of privacy. Instead, they are scattered texts which allow us to set up our discussions in class. Treat this as a synthetic class where everything we ve read thus far will be brought to bear on the contemporary problem of privacy. Thomas Jefferson, Political Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5 8. Pierre Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), chapters 1 & 2. Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, Harvard Law Review, 1890, 193 220. David Cole, The Three Leakers and What to Do About Them, The New York Review of Books, February 6, 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/feb/06/three-leakers-andwhat-do-about-them/. David Cole, Can the NSA Be Controlled?, The New York Review of Books, June 19, 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jun/19/can-nsa-becontrolled/. David Cole, Can Privacy Be Saved?, The New York Review of Books, March 6, 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/06/can-privacy-besaved/. Zygmunt Bauman et al., After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance, International Political Sociology 8, no. 2 (June 1, 2014): 121 44. Customer Letter, Apple, accessed August 29, 2017, http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/. [Time permitting] Woodrow Hartzog and Frederic Stutzman, The Case for Online Obscurity, California Law Review 101 (2013): 1 50. 13

28 November: (9) Global Justice without (Rawlsian) Banisters The global justice debate today is palpably Rawlsian. Can the idea of global justice be approached by way of non-domination? Or, deliberative democracy? This is an appropriate topic because it is perhaps the question whereby liberalism is at its strongest. Can democratic or republican ideas address this crucial question by offering analytical or normative insights beyond those on offer in liberal theory? If democratic or republican ideas can contribute meaningfully to this debate, then it passes an important test. Beyond this general debate, there is a more specific one regarding who the agents of global justice are (or should be). This is also a question that the more general critiques of global justice must be able to answer. Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1972, 229 243. Thomas W. Pogge, Assisting the Global Poor, Unpublished Essay, 2003, 1 21. Thomas Nagel, The Problem of Global Justice, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, no. 2 (2005): 113 147. David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 11, no. 4 (2008): 383 399. Cécile Laborde, Republicanism and Global Justice: A Sketch, European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 48 69. Philip Pettit, A Republican Law of Peoples, European Journal of Political Theory 9, no. 1 (2010): 70 94. Recommended Readings: Barbara Buckinx, Jonathan Trejo-Mathys, and Timothy Waligore, eds., Domination and Global Political Justice: Conceptual, Historical, and Institutional Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2015). Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Martha C. Nussbaum, Political Liberalism and Global Justice, Journal of Global Ethics 11, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 68 79. Mathias Risse, On Global Justice (Princeton University Press, 2012). Onora O Neill, Justice across Boundaries: Whose Obligations? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Thomas W. Pogge, Real World Justice, in Current Debates in Global Justice (Springer, 2005), 29 53. 14

5 December: (10) Citizenship, Denizenship and Alienage: Beyond liberal migration ethics? Migration presents a test whether republicanism of democratic critiques can afford analytical and normative insights beyond mainstream liberalism. The test is not easy to pass since liberalism, for all its flaws, has provided a powerful language for thinking about migration. Joseph H. Carens, 2013. The Ethics of Immigration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Christopher Heath Wellman, Immigration and Freedom of Association, Ethics 119, no. 1 (2008): 109 41. Arash Abizadeh, Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders, Political Theory 36, no. 1 (2008): 37 65. Iseult Honohan, Domination and Migration: An Alternative Approach to the Legitimacy of Migration Controls, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2014): 31 48. Sarah Fine, Non-Domination and the Ethics of Migration, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2014): 10 30. Rainer Bauböck, Reinventing Urban Citizenship, Citizenship Studies 7, no. 2 (2003): 139 160. Hoye, J. Matthew, Migration Ethics, Republican Liberty, and Sanctuary Cites, work in progress. Secondary Readings: Abizadeh, Arash, David Miller, Rainer Bauböck, and Joseph Carens. Review Symposium The Ethics of Immigration by Joseph Carens. Political Theory 43, no. 3 (June 1, 2015): 380 411. Abizadeh, Arash. Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control Your Own Borders. Political Theory 36, no. 1 (2008): 37 65. Fine, Sarah, and Lea Ypi, eds. Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership. 1 edition. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016. J. Matthew Hoye, Neorepublicanism, Old Imperialism, and Migration Ethics, Constellations, 2017. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (United States of America: Basic Books, 1983). Owen, David. Republicanism and the Constitution of Migrant Statuses. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 17, no. 1 (2014): 90 110. 15