This is the first full-length presentation of a republican alternative to the liberal and communitarian theories that have dominated political philosophy in recent years. The latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford Political Theory series, Pettit's eloquent and compelling account opens with an examination of the traditional republican conception of freedom as non-domination, contrasting this with established negative and positive views of liberty. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of this conception, displays its many attractions, and (...) makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at what the implementation of the ideal would imply for substantive policy-making, constitutional and democratic design, regulatory control and the relation between state and civil society. Prominent in this account is a novel concept of democracy, under which government is exposed to systematic contestation, and a vision of relations between state and society founded upon civility and trust. Pettit's powerful and insightful new work offers not only a unified, theoretical overview of the many strands of republican ideas, but also a new and sophisticated perspective on studies in related fields including the history of ideas, jurisprudence, and criminology. (shrink)

Recent disclosures suggest that many governments apply indiscriminate mass surveillance technologies that allow them to capture and store a massive amount of communications data belonging to citizens and non-citizens alike. This article argues that traditional liberal critiques of government surveillance that center on an individual right to privacy cannot completely capture the harm that is caused by such surveillance because they ignore its distinctive political dimension. As a complement to standard liberal approaches to privacy, the article develops a critique of (...) surveillance that focuses on the question of political power in the public sphere. (shrink)

Despite recent growth in surveillance capabilities there has been little discussion regarding the ethics of surveillance. Much of the research that has been carried out has tended to lack a coherent structure or fails to address key concerns. I argue that the just war tradition should be used as an ethical framework which is applicable to surveillance, providing the questions which should be asked of any surveillance operation. In this manner, when considering whether to employ surveillance, one should take into (...) account the reason for the surveillance, the authority of the surveillant, whether or not there has been a declaration of intent, whether surveillance is an act of last resort, what is the likelihood of success of the operation and whether surveillance is a proportionate response. Once underway, the methods of surveillance should be proportionate to the occasion and seek to target appropriate people while limiting surveillance of those deemed inappropriate. By drawing on the just war tradition, ethical questions regarding surveillance can draw on a long and considered discourse while gaining a framework which, I argue, raises all the key concerns and misses none. (shrink)

This study builds on the work of contemporary civic republicans, supplying a detailed analysis of the concept of domination absent in the familiar accounts of political freedom as non-domination.

Governments around the world collect huge amounts of personal data from their citizens for counterterrorist purposes. While mining this data has arguably increased the security of populations, the practices through which these data are currently collected in many countries have been criticised for violating individuals’ rights to privacy. Yet it is not clear what a permissible data collection regime would look like and thus also how we could reform existing regimes to make them morally acceptable. This article explores a number (...) of ways in which we might justify a data collection regime to those affected in spite of the setbacks to their privacy. In contrast to existing justifications, I argue that individuals can be asked to surrender their personal data as a requirement of reciprocity in a cooperative system in which they gain security from others doing likewise. Relying on this justification, though, has significant implications for how we should reform existing data collection regimes. In particular, more stringent limits will need to be placed on the forms which these regimes can legitimately take. (shrink)

It is often claimed that surveillance should be proportionate, but it is rarely made clear exactly what proportionate surveillance would look like beyond an intuitive sense of an act being excessive. I argue that surveillance should indeed be proportionate and draw on Thomas Hurka’s work on proportionality in war to inform the debate on surveillance. After distinguishing between the proportionality of surveillance per se, and surveillance as a particular act, I deal with objections to using proportionality as a legitimate ethical (...) measure. From there I argue that only certain benefits and harms should be counted in any determination of proportionality. Finally I look at how context can affect the proportionality of a particular method of surveillance. In conclusion, I hold that proportionality is not only a morally relevant criterion by which to assess surveillance, but that it is a necessary criterion. Furthermore, while granting that it is difficult to assess, that difficulty should not prevent our trying to do so. (shrink)

This article provides an account of the value of privacy in securing the republican aims of self-government and conditions of non-domination. It describes how loss of privacy might lead to subjugation to dominating power. The republican concept of domination provides the foundation of a broad and coherent account of the value of privacy. One that encompasses circumstances in which the subject suffers interference as a result of the loss, is aware that he has suffered a loss of privacy, but suffers (...) no subsequent interference and is unaware that he has suffered any loss of privacy, and suffers no subsequent interference. Liberal accounts explain the value of privacy in the first two circumstances by pointing to the possible effect of the loss on the autonomy of the subject, but because they focus on autonomy are unable to explain why privacy is valuable where an agent is unaware of the loss. The republican account provided here explains why loss is harmful in all three circumstances. The final part of the article argues that because privacy is a pre-requisite for effective participation in political life, and republicans consider such participation to be the essence of self-government and the means through which a polity can secure conditions of freedom, in a republican democracy individual privacy will be seen as a collective good. (shrink)

The republican tradition seems to have a blind spot about global justice. It has had little to say about pressing international issues such as world poverty or global inequalities. According to the old, if apocryphal, adage: extra rempublicam nulla justitia. Some may doubt that distributive justice (as opposed to freedom or citizenship) is the primary virtue of republican institutions; and at any rate most would agree that republican values have traditionally been realized in the polis not in the (oxymoronic) cosmopolis. (...) The article sketches a republican account of global non-domination which suggests that duties of distributive justice are not bounded to the institutions of a single society. In particular, it argues that republicans have good reasons to seek to curb those global inequalities which underpin what I call capability-denying domination. (shrink)

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In Liberal Loyalty, Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, and Habermas, (...) Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights. Liberal Loyalty is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds. (shrink)

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)

This chapter examines the role of law and rights for democracy in the context of republicanism. It considers the neo-republican defense of judicial review and its attempt to secure individual rights, along with the ‘adjudication’ of political and social conflicts in courts, civic equality and the political struggle among citizens as an essential component of republican democracy. It highlights the link between the very nature of a rights claim and a democratic process that ensures political equality and relates this democratic (...) argument for rights to the republican notion of liberty as nondomination. The chapter also discusses liberalism, rights and freedom as non-interference and concludes by arguing that the association of rights and democracy must be actualised within a real democratic process characterised by one person one vote, majority rule and regular elections between rival political parties. (shrink)