Quentin Skinner on the Proper Meaning of Republican Liberty

This article examines Quentin Skinner's revisionist project of reconciling republican liberty and negative freedom. His conceptualisation is analysed in the contexts of both contemporary political theory as well as a historiographical interpretation of Machiavelli. Skinner advances two claims: first, that Machiavelli's idea of liberty is negative freedom, and second, that republicanism shows that liberty is best maintained by the coercive use of the law. I argue that there are two conflicting concepts of the law underlying Skinner's theory. One regards the law as an invisible hand, while the other takes the law to be a liberating agency. Skinner's influence on the emerging juristic paradigm in republicanism is also considered.     

Republican justice

I raise three objections to Philip Pettit's republican account of justice: (a) that it fails to account adequately for the role of certain values such as substantive fairness; (b) that it represents an uncomfortable hybrid of egalitarianism and sufficientarianism; and (c) that it fails Pettit’s own ‘eyeball test’. I then conclude in a more constructive vein, speculating about the kind of account of justice it is supposed to be and suggesting that, construed a certain way, it may have resources for answering the three objections.     

Hobbes's Liberty and Skinner's Discontent

This article questions the plausibility of the interpretation of Hobbes's liberty that Quentin Skinner articulates in Hobbes and Republican Liberty . It argues that Skinner's book fails to prove two of the three claims it must uphold: the 'textual accuracy claim' and his 'methodological claim'. This article maintains that understanding Hobbes's use of liberty in Leviathan according to his definition of 'corporall liberty', as Skinner does, ignores many of Hobbes's claims that invoke liberty outside the beginning of chapter 21, resulting in a one-dimensional reading of Hobbes.     

Republican democracy and compulsory voting

In this article, I focus on Chapters 4 and 5 of On the People’s Terms, chapters that deal with democratic influence and control. I take an applied political science approach to how Pettit’s republic might be practically achieved by exploring the under-appreciated capacity of elections to mobilise the resistance-prone, contestatory public upon which his republicanism depends. Whereas Pettit tends to focus on public contestation between elections and only demands that the public has the opportunity to vote when elections are held, I argue that they should be given a more prominent role within his republic and further, that access to voting is not enough: rather, citizens should actually vote. In order to ensure that participation is socially inclusive and that the public’s attempts at influence are ‘individualised’, ‘unconditioned’ and ‘efficacious’ in the manner Pettit desires, I suggest that compulsory voting should be a major pillar of his republicanism.     

Republican liberty and border controls

This article examines the normative status of border controls from a neo-republican perspective, grounded in the value of freedom as non-domination. It makes use of Philip Pettit’s account of this kind of freedom and discusses Pettit’s own remarks on the status of border controls. Against Pettit, it argues that the domination generated by border controls is ineliminable given existing political institutions, because such controls cannot avoid subjecting non-citizens to coercion in ways that are not forced to track their interests. The article also argues for an alternative neo-republican account of border controls that does not deny their coerciveness but allows for certain border control policies in non-ideal circumstances.     

Republican Europe and Multicultural Citizenship

This article explores the possibilities for a normative understanding of the politics of EU development from a republican perspective. It draws on current debates on republicanism, which combine republican, liberal and multicultural themes, and defends an approach to European citizenship and the design of European institutions in which the contemporary republican emphasis on freedom as non-domination is complemented with the multiculturalist concern with group rights that cut across national boundaries. It is argued that the combination of republican institutions and multicultural citizenship can provide a model for European construction.     

How Terrorism Upsets Liberty

As terrorism increasingly penetrates Western democracies, liberals and libertarians are obliged to ask themselves whether contending with it justifies restricting civil liberty and, if so, to what extent. Neither personal security nor individual liberty is ever fully realised – both are a matter of degree – and they are often perceived as being at odds with each other. Hence it has been suggested that we reconsider the existing trade-off between them, or reassess their 'rate of exchange'. While such questions are sometimes raised by left-leaning liberals, they are in fact particularly acute for liberals on the right, or libertarians, who would normally resist any increase in government intervention. Right-wingers who advocate 'hands off' policies on all other occasions now call for an increase in government intervention as regards security measures. Many left-liberals, on the other hand, are reluctant to concede any further power to the state in order to combat terrorism.     

One Concept of Liberty

In this paper I argue in favour of a single conception of liberty, that picked out by Berlin as negative liberty. However, Berlin's defence of liberty so understood seems to rest on a view not open to the moral realist.
The first half of the paper explains this and suggests an alternative defence compatible with such a moral position. The defence rests on an account of why we value freedom. In the second half of the paper this negative conception is defended against recent criticism from Charles Taylor. His appeal to qualitative distinctions within freedom is queried, as is the conception of the self that seems required for his outlook.     

Mill, Liberty and the Facts of Life

This paper examines John Stuart Mill's discussion of economic liberty and individual liberty, and his view of the relationship between the two. It explores how, and how effectively, Mill developed his arguments about the two liberties; reveals the lineages of thought from which they derived; and considers how his arguments were altered by political economists not long after his death. It is argued that the distinction Mill drew between the two liberties provided him with a framework of concepts which legitimized significant government intervention in economic matters without restricting individual liberty.     

Liberty and development: A further empirical perspective

This paper uses the Wright ratings of economic freedom to investigate the relationship between economic freedom and economic development for most countries in the world. This relationship is apparently strong and direct for such economic freedoms as freedom of property and freedom of movement but inverse for freedom of association. These findings appear to be independent of the type of economic system or civil liberties, as measured by the Gastil ratings, which have their own important effects on economic development.With the statistical assistance of Laurie D. Still. Comments on previous drafts by Iraj Aberdian, Merle Holden, Brian Kantor, John W. Kendrick, Peter Kennedy, Jack Knetsch, Chris Lingle, Denton Marks, Peter Moll, Frank Vorhies, an anonymous referee, and the participants of seminars at the University of Cape Town, the University of Natal and Simon Fraser University are gratefully acknowledged.     

A Public-Choice View of Swiss Liberty

This article compares the provisions of the American and Swissconstitutions from a public-choice perspective. Accordingly,the Swiss Constitution is seen as one designed to bring abouta transmission of citizens' desires into political action, whereasthe U.S. Constitution is designed to prevent the misuse of grantedpower. The specific level of analysis employed here is the principal-agentmodel, which is used to examine collective decisionmaking atthe constitutional, legislative, and para-constitutional levels.The article then considers the role of the courts as arbiterof constitutional questions and conflicts.