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Competing for Liberty: The Republican Critique of Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2012

NADIA URBINATI
NADIA URBINATI*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
*
Nadia Urbinati is Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies, Columbia University, 7th Floor, International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027 (nu15@columbia.edu).
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Abstract

Freedom as non-domination has acquired a leading status in political science. As a consequence of its success, neo-roman republicanism also has achieved great prominence as the political tradition that delivered it. Yet despite the fact that liberty in the Roman mode was forged not only in direct confrontation with monarchy but against democracy as well, the relationship of republicanism to democracy is the great absentee in the contemporary debate on non-domination. This article brings that relationship back into view in both historical and conceptual terms. It illustrates the misrepresentations of democracy in the Roman tradition and shows how these undergirded the theory of liberty as non-domination as a counter to political equality as a claim to taking part in imperium. In so doing it brings to the fore the “liberty side” of democratic citizenship as the equal rights of all citizens to exercise their political rights, in direct or indirect form.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 106 , Issue 3 , August 2012 , pp. 607 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

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