Two Traditions of Radical Democracy from the 1830 Revolution

This chapter discusses the contrasting radical republican visions of Filippo Buonarotti and Godefroy Cavaignac at the time of 1830 Revolution in France and in opposition to Lafayette’s accommodation with liberal monarchy. These two revolutionary models shared a common admiration for the egalitarian Jacobin tradition of the French Revolution, but diverged sharply on the role of leadership and organization in republican movements, as well as the tactics and strategies to be pursued. Cavaignac’s inclusive, broad-based, and optimistic vision contrasted with Buonarotti’s closed, hierarchical, and sombre view. These discussions highlighted the creativity and robustness of radical republican political culture, as well as the key role the virtues played in shaping its political mobilizations during this period.

Introduction

In the Introduction of this book we begin by providing a conceptual and historical overview of radical republicanism, with a particular emphasis on the key role that popular sovereignty plays in the radical tradition, exploring how it relates to three central issues of concern to republicans. These issues are (1) how the ideals of the tradition can be realized in political and social movements; (2) what republican political institutions should look like; and (3) how its economy should be structured. Finally, we finish the Introduction by providing an overview of the volume’s contents, and highlight the aspects of each chapter.

The Intellectual Origins of Turkish Radical Republicanism

This chapter traces the radical heritage of Turkish republicanism to the political thought of the radical branch of the Young Ottoman secret society. It examines the core republican principles of several leading Young Ottoman radicals: Sağır Ahmed Beyzâde Mehmed, İskender Beyzâde Reşad, and Subhî Paşazâde Nuri. The core notions of their ideology entail freedom from oppression, a deep commitment to popular sovereignty and constitutionalism, an emphasis on political activism and revolution, a stress on international solidarity and peace, and a recognition of the need for social equality. Their republicanism was antithetical to monarchy, and a central aim was the abolition of the sultanate by force, but unlike European republican models they wanted the head of government to be a non-hereditary elected caliph. Although less known than some of their intellectual counterparts, the role they played in the development of Turkish republicanism proved no less pervasive and profound.

Marx’s Social Republic

This chapter explores how Marx’s conception of the political institutions of socialism (the social republic) was inherited from the radical elements of the republican tradition. I explore three dimensions of this inheritance. First, I discuss his support for replacing the institutions of representative government with a form of popular delegacy, where representatives are constrained by imperative mandates, the right to recall, and short terms of office. Second, I explain why Marx criticized the separation of powers and preferred legislative supremacy over the executive. Third, I discuss Marx’s belief in the necessity of placing the state’s administrative and repressive functions under popular control, by transforming the standing army into a civic militia and making the bureaucracy elected, accountable, and deprofessionalized.

Solidarity and Civic Virtue

This chapter argues that debates around republicanism and civic virtue are structured around two unwarranted assumptions. First, neo-republicans and their critics assume that civic virtues are qualities that stabilize a free state. Second, they assume that the cultivation of virtue primarily requires coercive inculcation. I contest both assumptions through historical reconstruction of nineteenth-century ‘labour republicanism’. Labour republicans thought about civic virtue as qualities that agents exercise to transform rather than stabilize a regime. And they argued that virtue developed out of the self-education and activity of citizens themselves, not state coercion. The real danger lies not in the defence of an illiberal state but of the kinds of demands that the oppressed make on each other to act virtuously. As such, labour republicans offer us a model for thinking about the role—and risks—of virtue in emancipatory politics.

Citizens’ Assemblies and Republican Democracy

There has been growing interest in citizens’ assemblies (CAs) as institutions to enhance democratic politics: assemblies that consist wholly or mainly of individuals drawn at random from the general public so as to be representative of the population, which have the responsibility to deliberate over an issue and make recommendations or decisions. But exactly what kind of role should CAs have in a republican model of democracy, distinguished by commitment to the values of deliberation to the common good; political equality and resilience to oligarchy; and active popular sovereignty? The chapter argues against the view that CAs should replace elected assemblies. However, it also argues against seeing CAs as wholly subordinate to elected assemblies. It sets out a specific institutional mechanism in which CAs are integrated with a power to initiate referendums (the petition-assembly-referendum scheme) and shows how this is supported by the distinctive values of a republican democracy.

From Neo-Republicanism to Critical Republicanism

The aim of this chapter is to show how what I call critical republicanism can be developed by rethinking the neo-republican theory of domination on the basis of a more continental line of republicanism. On the one hand, I argue that with regard to all three of the most important elements of a theory of non-domination, its normative core, the conception of domination, and its institutional implications, Pettit’s neo-republicanism does contain a powerful critical potential, too easily dismissed by some of his critics. On the other hand, I show how this critical potential can be strengthened by reconceptualizing each of the elements of his theory of domination from a perspective inspired by the Kantian line of republican thought and contemporary critical theory.

The Utopian Imagination

This chapter examines the French tradition of radical republicanism, from the late Enlightenment to the twentieth century. Radical republicanism was a loose ensemble, especially driven by its prioritization of equality over liberty, its commitment to resisting political and social oppression, and its utopian aspiration to imagine a better world. While it expressed itself in different sensibilities, through its embrace of Rousseauism, this republican tradition was united by a common attachment to key ideals of the radical Enlightenment: the concept of the sovereignty of the people, the idea of the general will as the inalienable foundation of the political order, the belief in the human capacity for regeneration, the vision of citizenship based on the practice of the virtues and the rejection of tyranny, and the universal sense that all humans were bound by a sense of fraternity.

Republicanism, Virtuous and Corrupt

This chapter focuses on Niccolò Machiavelli’s analysis of social strife, institutional change, and political leadership in the Florentine Histories, demonstrating that the work continues to affirm the radical, democratic republicanism that the author expressed in works such as the Discourses and even The Prince. The chapter argues that the Florentine Histories continues to exhibit Machiavelli’s populist, democratic proclivities that favour empowerment of the common people over wealthy elites within republics. Moreover, it demonstrates that the Histories functions as an exercise in silent comparative constitutionalism; a tacit analysis through which Machiavelli demonstrates how, in ancient Rome, civic discord and political leadership produced admirable constitutional reforms that were conducive to civic virtue, but how, in medieval Florence, social conflict and elite prerogative generated deficient institutional innovations that facilitated civic corruption.

Popular Resistance and the Idea of Rights

Neo-republican theorists have expressed scepticism at the idea of non-institutional moral rights which they associate with objectionable aspects of the natural rights tradition. However, their alternative risk making rights the gift of the state and so losing the role of rights as a vocabulary of political critique and struggle. In this chapter, I defend the coherence of rights as moral entitlements which individuals possess independently of state recognition. I examine an early radical strand of natural rights thinking as articulated by the English Levellers. These early modern radical republicans defended a right to resistance as a fall-back right that guaranteed the other rights one enjoyed. Attention to this current of thinking has the potential to correct the statist bias of contemporary republican accounts by highlighting the idea of rights as a vocabulary of social criticism tied to the people as a source of moral claims and collective resistance.