Akadēmiskā · Dienasgrāmata

Ironically, at the zenith of its accomplishment, republicanism is superseded and swallowed up by the classical liberalism of Bentham, Mill, and
Constant. In the political debates of the 19th and 20th centuries, liberalism, either in its classical or welfarist incarnations wields the cudgels against socialism, conservatism, nationalist revanchism, and other contenders. Except for occasional historical nods, republicanism became a vanishing presence.

What makes the story of more than antiquarian interest, according to its narrators, is that the great wave of post-Lockean liberalism, although undoubtedly a progressive force within political evolution, failed adequately to incorporate several of the genuine achievements of republicanism. Accordingly, the liberal order we have inherited is impoverished. Three alleged losses are prominently featured in this literature: (1) concern for a common good that stands over and above the various subjectively preferred ends of individual citizens; (2) active participation in political life by the citizenry at large, or at least a substantial cross-section thereof; and (3) recognition of a sense of freedom as non-domination that transcends the shallow negative freedom of liberal noninterference. Not all of these strands are equally prominent or even present in the proposals of each of the contemporary republicans, and it is not clear that they are mutually compatible.

However, if there exists a tradition of civic republicanism that merits revival, it will be in virtue of at least one of these three alleged deficiencies within liberal thought. Otherwise there will certainly be reason to attend to republican forebears so as better to ascertain the distant and proximate sources of liberal constitutionalism, but not thereby to improve it.