David Miller and Alan Ryan — Republicanism a Theory of Freedom and…

99 published claims from this book.

• A freely chosen contract can still create relations of domination between parties
• Accepting vulnerability to others is necessary to enjoy maximal non-domination
• An act is arbitrary when chosen without tracking affected parties’ interests
• Arbitrariness concerns the controls on an act, not its consequences
• Asymmetric public attention to false negatives drives punitive politics
• Broadening the franchise made the rich ideal of liberty unaffordable
• Campaign finance dependency structurally undermines formal democratic inclusiveness
• Citizen vigilance is required because authorities cannot police everything
• Civic virtue and mutual personal trust are the same achievement
• Civic virtue grows from rewarding group identification, not self-discipline.
• Civic virtue grows through identification with the polity, offering new identities
• Civic virtue rests on group identification and satisfying identities, not just self-discipline
• Class self-segregation in cities makes citizens’ views of others hostage to fantasy
• Communitarian goods are defined by non-excludability among group members
• Constituted freedom still permits ranking rival institutional arrangements
• Contestatory democracy cultivates the civic virtue the state needs
• Contrasting liberty with slavery reveals a non-domination rather than non-interference theory of freedom.
• Criminal law curbs domination only through cultural backup
• Criminal punishment patterns lack deterrence or retributive logic
• Decentralized pursuit of non-domination breeds accumulating petty despotisms, not freedom
• Deliberative legitimacy requires considerations neutral across interest groups
• Deliberative polling reveals the public would hold different views if it thought harder
• Descriptive representation instruments must vary with the group and electoral context
• Direct democracy can itself enable the tyranny of a majority
• Distrust-based institutional design can actively corrupt honest officials.
• Domination persists amid law as lower-intensity arbitrary household and workplace power
• Domination requires only the capacity to interfere arbitrarily, not its exercise
• Environmental degradation harms present and future citizens non-arbitrarily
• Environmental harm from innocent aggregate action still reduces freedom
• Equal standing between parties is required for trust overtures to be sincere
• Even un-harmed members of a vulnerable class remain dominated
• Freedom as non-domination is a universal primary good requiring state action to secure.
• Freedom as non-domination is constituted by institutions, not caused by them.
• Freedom as non-domination is inherently dynamic and adapts to emerging interests
• Freedom as non-domination makes mundane institutional design philosophically central
• Freedom as non-domination protects against the goodwill of others turning sour.
• Freedom as non-domination, unlike non-interference, cannot be fully enjoyed by one person alone
• Freedom as security against arbitrary interference is not a means-end confusion
• Freedom can be reconceived as non-domination rather than non-interference or self-mastery
• Freedom from domination rests on normative respect, not fear of sanctions.
• Freedom requires civic trust, not solitary defensive walls
• Freedom requires others actually be blocked from arbitrary interference, not merely unexercised
• Freedom’s subjective recognition, not just its fact, constitutes its value
• Genuine regard can only reward virtue that is not performed to win regard.
• Groups without a shared political language produce only inarticulate noise
• High republican ideals depend on mundane institutions like committees working reliably.
• Hobbes held that law always invades liberty regardless of its character
• Hobbes redefined liberty as the absence of coercion rather than non-domination
• Institutional vigilance operates alongside rather than against interpersonal trust
• Institutions can deliberately cultivate servility as a form of unfreedom
• Institutions constitute citizens’ freedom from domination rather than causally producing it
• Institutions designed for worst-case knaves may actively corrupt virtuous people.
• Interference is a factual, moral-free concept independent of wrongfulness
• Lacking civic virtue costs a person identity, not just effort.
• Laws should be selected through contest and testing rather than consensual design
• Legitimacy, built through contestatory democracy, generates civic virtue.
• Losing on deeply held cultural issues can feel like domination despite fair procedure
• Material choice-extent lacks the diminishing-returns logic that equality in power has
• Modern anonymity does not weaken regard-based social sanctions.
• Modern liberty-as-noninterference originated among authoritarian writers opposing American independence
• Modern police pose the threat standing armies once did
• Nearly everyone belongs to some minority vulnerable to majority will
• Newly articulated interests require virtuous people to press them
• Non-arbitrary governance needs contestability rather than actual consent
• Non-domination is less skeptical of government but socially more radical than non-interference
• Non-domination requires normative reasons for respect, not just legal sanctions
• Non-domination requires security against interference across possible worlds, not mere actual non-interference.
• Non-domination, unlike friendship, requires state pursuit because individuals cannot secure it privately
• One person’s freedom requires that all in their vulnerability class be free
• Personal trust shifts the odds in the trustor’s favour by incentivizing good behavior
• Public authorities cannot police all offences, so citizens must self-monitor
• Punishment regimes that assume everyone is corrupt produce six documented perverse effects.
• Regard-based sanctioning disciplines behavior through opinion while affirming virtue
• Republican freedom as non-domination fuses absence from negative and mastery from positive liberty.
• Republican liberty vanished even from the history of political thought.
• Republican non-domination language can articulate left and right causes alike
• Republicanism distrusts the powerful, not the ordinary people, who need restraint.
• Republicanism is an empirical research program, not a fixed policy blueprint
• Republicans favor large state responsibilities but small discretionary powers
• Republicans held that subjection to another’s arbitrary will itself constitutes unfreedom
• Responsive institutions require citizens virtuous enough to press new claims
• Restraint by fair law is compatible with freedom, unlike arbitrary sway
• Risky personal trust overtures presuppose and expand the trustor’s freedom
• Sanctions designed for worst-case agents alienate the majority who comply voluntarily
• Sanctions targeting deviants can backfire by worsening the conduct of natural compliers.
• Severe sentencing fails to reduce crime yet politicians escalate it anyway
• Social norms operate through common-knowledge approval and disapproval rather than enforcement.
• State abuse of power harms everyone’s freedom more than private abuse does
• The employment relation was defined as the master’s arbitrary power
• The non-interference ideal let dominated groups like women be counted as free
• The non-interference ideal served to legitimate colonial subjugation
• The rhetoric of non-interference renders dominated people’s grievances inaudible
• True liberty is resilient security against interference, not merely its absence
• Universalizing equality made freedom-as-non-domination seem unrealistic
• Vigilance is performative distrust that coexists with deep general trust
• Vigilant distrust of authorities can coexist with high general trust.
• Voluntary acts of personal trust give the trusted party an incentive to be trustworthy
• Welfare delivered as revocable charity rather than right subjects recipients to domination
• Widespread mutual trust alone makes large-scale non-domination freedom possible