Arbitrary state and corporate powers are helping to turn the Internet into a global surveillance dragnet. Responses to this novel form of power have been tepid and ineffective. Liberal critiques of surveillance are constrained by their focus on privacy, security and the underlying presupposition that freedom consists only of freedom from interference. By contrast, (post)Foucauldian critiques rejecting liberalism have been well rewarded analytically, but have proven incapable of addressing normative questions regarding the relationship between surveillance and freedom. Quite apart from (...) these debates, neorepublicans have excavated a third concept of freedom, understood as non-domination. Could neorepublicanism overcome the limitations of liberal and (post)Foucauldian critiques of surveillance? We argue, positively, that neorepublicanism can accommodate much of the (post)Foucauldian analyses while also incorporating a normative critique of surveillance vis-à-vis freedom. We further argue, negatively, that surveillance power has outstripped the capacities of traditional republican institutional responses to domination. We conclude by considering ways in which neorepublicanism can be recalibrated to address the novelty of surveillance power while adhering to the ideal of non-domination. Two ways of addressing the problem are proposed: an offensive, dedicated surveillance antipower and a defensive republican amplification of privacy. (shrink)

En este artículo propongo una justificación de la democracia, y de la autoridad política derivada de ella, a partir del ideal republicano de libertad como no-dominación. Argumento que los procedimientos democráticos tienen valor por sí mismos porque son mecanismos de decisión donde hay libertad de forma recíproca. Después muestro que la autoridad debe ser adecuadamente controlada para evitar que exista dominación, razón por la cual tiene que concebirse como una relación fiduciaria, en la que los gobernantes actúan como agentes de (...) la ciudadanía. Finalmente, establezco la necesidad de que los gobernantes cumplan con deberes fiduciarios y que los ciudadanos desarrollen virtudes cívicas. In this article I propose a justification of democracy, and of the political authority derived from it, based on the republican ideal of freedom as non-domination. I argue that democratic procedures have value in themselves because they are decision-making mechanisms where there is freedom on a reciprocal basis. I then show that political authority must be adequately controlled in order to avoid the existence of domination. This is why it must be conceived as a fiduciary relationship, in which the rulers act as agents of the citizenry. Finally, I establish the need for rulers to comply with fiduciary duties and for citizens to develop civic virtues. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel, neo-republican account of just state surveillance in the information age. The goal of state surveillance should be to avoid and prevent domination, both public and private. In light of that conception of justice, the paper makes three substantive points. First, it argues that modern state surveillance based upon information technology and predicated upon a close partnership with the tech sector gives the state significant power and represents a serious potential source of domination. Second, it argues (...) that, nonetheless, state surveillance can serve legitimate republican ends and so unilateral and private technological attempts to block it may be wrongful. Third, it argues that, despite the serious normative failings of current institutions, state surveillance can be justly regulated and made accountable through a legal liability regime that incentivizes tech company intermediaries to ally with civil society groups in order to safeguard the privacy rights of potential subjects of state surveillance. (shrink)

The article elaborates an original intertwined reading of republican theory, deliberative democracy and political equality. It argues that republicans, deliberative democrats and egalitarian scholars have not paid sufficient attention to a number of features present in these bodies of scholarships that relate them in mutually beneficial ways. It shows that republicanism and deliberative democracy are related in mutually beneficial ways, it makes those relations explicit, and it deals with potential objections against them. Additionally, it elaborates an egalitarian principle underpinning the (...) resulting model that I label Equality of Access and Deliberation. The upshot of these considerations is a novel and mutually reinforcing interrelated three-tiered theoretical and institutional proposal. (shrink)