2 - Republican Liberty as the Coupling between Competition and Democracy

Summary

This chapter introduces the conceptual claim of this book that the idea of a competition-democracy nexus is grounded in a normative commitment to a republican conception of economic liberty as non-domination originating in ancient Roman thought. The chapter first shows how the existing ‘special interest capture’ and ‘conventional liberty’ accounts fail to make sense of the competition–democracy nexus. It then explores the republican conception of liberty as non-domination as an alternative explanation of the idea of a competition–democracy nexus. It shows that this republican understanding of economic liberty is the only explanatory variable that can explain why competition enhances and the concentration of economic power undermines democracy and why competition law is the right tool to address this problem.