Maximizing non-interference can require self-curtailing strategic deference.

Evidence

For it may very well be that the best way to maximize someone’s expectation of non-interference is to rely in good part on their native wit and cunning: to get them to look after their own freedom by forcing them to develop and exercise strategies of placating and anticipating the powerful. A world in which strategic flattery and avoidance is rampant—a world in which women become adept at placating their men folk, for example, or at not crossing their paths—may represent the best prospect for keeping interference as such at a minimum. … Having to practise strategic deference and anticipation, however, like having to live with uncertainty, is a serious cost. For the strategic disposition imposed requires the agent to curtail their own choices: to tug the forelock at appropriate moments and, when that promises not to be enough, to keep out of sight. Such enforced self-denial, of course, does not represent a form of interference, even of arbitrary interference, for interference has to be intentionally perpetrated by another; that, indeed, is why the cause of freedom as non-interference can be promoted by an arrangement involving a lot of strategic deference and anticipation. But nonetheless it is clearly bad that people should have to resort to denying themselves various choices in order to achieve non-interference. And it is a clear advantage of the ideal of freedom as non-domination that in targeting arbitrary interference as the enemy, and in seeking to reduce the capacities of others to interfere arbitrarily in anyone’s affairs, it presents a picture of the free life in which the need for strategy is minimized. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 426

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies why non-domination is superior to non-interference: the latter forgives strategic curtailment of one’s own choices.
• XREF: connects to: Subjection can maximize a person’s expected freedom from interference while leaving them vulnerable. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 422; Non-domination requires security against interference across possible worlds, not mere actual non-interference. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 137; Freedom as non-domination inherently requires certainty, unlike maximal non-interference. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 420 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Strategic moves work by constraining one’s own behavior to shape an opponent’s expectations. #expands (0.90) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 361
• Subjection can maximize a person’s expected freedom from interference while leaving them vulnerable. #qualifies (0.85) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 422
• Freedom as non-domination inherently requires certainty, unlike maximal non-interference. #responds-to (0.82) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 420
• Non-domination requires security against interference across possible worlds, not mere actual non-interference. #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 137