Philip Pettit — Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government

124 published claims from this book.

• A benign master still dominates, so freedom requires civic status, not mere non-interference.
• A constitutional authority can end domination only if it tracks citizens’ shared interests
• A dominant party can accept a non-dominating order by recognizing shared vulnerability.
• A kindly master dominates subjects without interfering while well-ordered law interferes without dominating
• A merely harmless disposition does not reduce a power-bearer’s domination.
• Anti-domination institutions must remove power, not just reduce harm probability
• Arbitrary interference ignores the affected parties’ own interests and opinions
• Arbitrary interference inflicts extra harm through uncertainty and anxiety beyond mere restriction.
• Arbitrary interference is defined by its impunity, not by its content
• Arbitrary power persists at lower intensities inside ordinary rule-governed institutions like marriage and employment
• Arendtian direct democracy can itself produce majority tyranny that republicans oppose
• Bentham claimed priority for defining liberty as absence of restraint
• Bentham treated all coercive law, even liberty-creating regulation, as diminishing liberty.
• Berlin’s genealogy tainted positive liberty by associating it with dubious sources
• Blackstone held well-framed laws generate rather than restrict liberty
• Civic republicans define freedom as non-domination, not mere non-interference
• Classical employment itself constituted domination by the master’s will
• Colonial grievances were framed as slavery under arbitrary parliamentary will
• Decentralized pursuit of non-domination breeds petty despotisms, not freedom.
• Domination and interference are distinct evils that can occur independently
• Domination becomes a mutual communicative asymmetry, not just objective control
• Domination can be directed at individuals through their group or collective identity.
• Domination consists in a power of arbitrary interference, not interference actually exercised.
• Domination is a distinct harm even when no interference occurs
• Domination only fully operates when it is common knowledge among those involved
• Domination persists wherever cultural and institutional safeguards are absent, not only under explicit tyranny
• Domination varies by domain, range, and intensity rather than being total
• Domination varies in intensity from mild to absolute unchecked interference
• Dominators can be blind to the fact their domination demeans the dominated
• Early modern readers mostly rejected the Hobbesian, not the republican, view of liberty
• Effective rebuke against a power-bearer reduces their domination over others.
• Eighteenth-century Anglo thought distinguished civil liberty from the natural liberty law restrains
• Eighteenth-century English thinkers held law as the source, not enemy, of civil liberty
• EJ activism shifts from facility opposition to contesting decision-making legitimacy
• Equal non-interference does not secure equal status where power asymmetries exist
• Equalizing resources lets dominated parties defend themselves and end domination
• Even ordinary needed helpers can hold dominating power over others
• Expanding non-domination means creating new undominated choices, not only removing domination
• Exploitative bargaining and spiteful omissions can themselves constitute interference.
• Exposure to another’s arbitrary capacity, not its use, constitutes loss of freedom
• Factional interests are identified only through open public contestation from every corner of society.
• Failed ambitions of total philosophical dominance breed cynicism that denies political reason exists
• Freedom as non-domination differs from non-interference by targeting the mere capacity for arbitrary interference.
• Freedom as non-domination inherently requires certainty, unlike maximal non-interference.
• Freedom as non-domination is conceptually inseparable from reducing uncertainty, strategy, and subordination
• Freedom as non-domination prizes secure undominated choice over mere quantity of choice.
• Freedom as non-domination requires embracing state power rather than fearing it
• Freedom as non-domination yields benefits beyond those of non-interference.
• Freedom as non-interference can exist in isolation while non-domination requires society
• Freedom as nondomination yields radical policies and democracy through contestability rather than consent
• Freedom from interference lacks stability absent publicly visible protective institutions
• Freedom in the republican tradition means non-domination rather than merely non-interference
• Freedom is a social status conferring security and standing among others
• Freedom is absent under any master’s power, however kindly that master behaves
• Freedom is conceived either as absence of interference or as self-mastery
• Freedom is increased by enabling undominated choice, not merely by reducing domination
• Freedom requires material independence from another’s arbitrary will
• Hobbes defined liberty as the mere absence of legal coercion.
• Hobbesian freedom-as-non-interference displaced republican non-domination only in later eighteenth-century writings
• Individual defensive resistance without shared institutions collapses into near-permanent civil war.
• Individual freedom and state freedom are the same condition under republicanism
• Institutions can be designed so that non-domination is smoothly maximized
• Interference can be non-arbitrary when institutions force officials to track citizens’ interests
• Interference is arbitrary by lack of control, not by harmful consequences.
• Interference is non-dominating when structured by shared-interest conditions and contestable penalties
• Interference occurs regardless of whether the interfering act is morally justified
• Law can be non-arbitrary and freedom-preserving rather than inherently dominating
• Law that is non-arbitrary does not make citizens unfree
• Legitimacy of state power rests on contestability, not actual consent
• Liberals abandoned non-domination because universalizing it seemed unrealistic, not because it was wrong.
• Liberty can be lost through domination even when no one actively interferes.
• Living under another’s arbitrary power demeans even when unexercised
• Living without domination, uncertainty, and subordination is a great universal good.
• Locke regarded non-arbitrary law as enlarging rather than constraining freedom
• Majority rule can dominate minorities and so fails as a guard against arbitrariness
• Maximizing non-interference can justify leaving employees and women subject to powerful others.
• Maximizing non-interference can require self-curtailing strategic deference.
• Mere non-interference can coexist with domination when security is absent
• Milton saw republican freedom as equal ease of ordinary social contact between citizens
• Montesquieu defined civic liberty as the tranquility from trusting fellow citizens
• Non-arbitrary interference tracking the agent’s interests does not compromise freedom
• Non-domination confers security that survives others’ changed attitudes
• Non-domination enables equal eye-to-eye standing that non-interference cannot guarantee.
• Non-domination makes citizens more radical and less state-sceptical
• Non-domination provides resilience against arbitrary interference that non-interference lacks.
• Norms can sustain regimes only while elites can plausibly invoke shared commitments
• On the interference view, all law restricts liberty and freedom is only residual discretion.
• Paley reports that common discourse defined liberty as security against arbitrary interference.
• People depend on one another for the very ability to think, not merely causally
• Perceived subordination stems from others’ accessible options, not their probable actions
• Political theories are judged by both their axioms and their derived theorems.
• Post-capitalist politics must coordinate autonomous struggles without centralizing them
• Power can be conceptually unified across agents, systems, and effects
• Predictable lawful coercion costs less psychological freedom than unpredictable arbitrary interference
• Premodern republicanism restricted freedom to propertied males only
• Privately pursued security against interference would distribute freedom unequally
• Pro-independence rhetoric met its libertarian counter-argument from Benthamian source
• Protest improves conditions by forcing majority recognition of minority grievances
• Providing mobility to the disabled expands freedom even absent any domination
• Pure majoritarian democracy enables the very arbitrary power republicans oppose
• Reducing arbitrary power requires both filtering mechanisms and penalty-backed accountability
• Republican and liberal theories agree freedom requires real choice capacity, not just formal non-interference
• Republican democrats treated participation as a means to, not the definition of, liberty.
• Republican freedom depends on laws that constrain power without creating new domination
• Republican freedom has always included a felt dimension of security, not just formal non-interference
• Republican freedom requires living among others, not isolation from them
• Republican institutions constitute freedom as non-domination rather than cause it.
• Republican liberty is a protected status, with democracy merely instrumental to it
• Republican tradition is unified by a distinctive way of conceptualizing liberty
• Republicanism offers a third way of understanding freedom beyond liberal and populist models
• Republicanism’s elite origins can be repurposed as a universal ideal
• Securing a good means protecting it, not maximizing its likelihood
• Some goods are valuable yet not appropriate objects of state action
• State action is justified for goods individuals cannot secure privately but states can
• State interference is non-arbitrary when it tracks shared rather than exceptional interests.
• Subjection can maximize a person’s expected freedom from interference while leaving them vulnerable.
• Subjugation becomes common knowledge because power resources are salient and detectable
• Systematic vulnerability to another’s will cripples people’s capacity for open, assertive engagement
• The commonwealthmen’s liberty ideal centered on non-interference and personal independence.
• The ideal colonial official exerted supreme but wholly unfelt authority
• The negative liberty idea was forged by opponents, not supporters, of the American Revolution
• The republican idea of freedom as non-domination dominated Anglophone thought until the late 1700s
• The republican tradition prized liberty as non-domination, not democratic participation
• Well-formed law ranks with natural obstacles, not coercive domination