Forging the Resistive Republic: Social Capital, Institutional Stability, and Civic Virtue in Pluralist Democracies

Abstract

Republicans too often take for granted features not easy to bring about in the absence of social capital. Lovett and Pettit (2009) consider that it is through collective political actions that citizens shed light on acts of domination. For Pettit (2012), civic vigilance is the only guarantee that “the government will be forced to remain responsive to popular inputs”. As Kimpell (2023) mentions, one of the weak points of republican theories remains the lack of an account of norm generation. I aim to show how this could occur in a way that does not constitute itself an arbitrary interference of the government in the people’s lives. The kind of generalized reciprocity which is of utmost importance for republicanism often depends on the presence of ties that connect different socio-economic groups within communities and, “where such interactions do not naturally occur, forums for interaction can be intentionally created and designed to encourage development of social capital” (Warner 2001). More specifically, I argue that such forums for interaction could be represented by polycentric systems. Furthermore, I argue that embracing polycentricity constitutes a non-dominating way in which we could promote the “resistive community” (Pettit 2012) required by republicanism. I consider that the empirical results extensively documented in the Institutional Analysis and Development framework are an appropriate starting point for designing novel republican policies and institutions that can function alongside sufficient levels of trust.

In Discourses on Livy, Niccolò Machiavelli states that, “for those who have prudently constituted a republic, among the most necessary things ordered by them has been to constitute a guard for freedom, and according as this is well placed, that free way of life lasts more or less” (Machiavelli 1996, 74). Although this same concern is shared by modern republicans and motivates their theoretical pursuits, what is still up for debate within republicanism is the extent to which liberty is best protected by institutions (Geuna 2013). Some believe that the institutional framework could be set up to minimize “domination by government officials while permitting it sufficient power and purpose to restrain private actors from dominating others” (Ferejohn 2013, 128). Others note that the institutional proposals of classical republicans have all relied on the notion of a virtuous citizenry and the development of an appropriate ethos (Kimpell 2023, 35). For writers in arguably the most prominent branch of contemporary republicanism—civic or neo-Roman republicanism—civic virtue remains important, albeit in an instrumental way (Lovett 2022, 194).

Civic republicanism holds that freedom is institutionally constituted, meaning that it can only be experienced under a well-ordered institutional framework (Lovett 2022, 21). The intellectual origins of classical republicanism can be traced back to the Italian Renaissance, when theorists such as Machiavelli or Guicciardini rediscovered and re-imagined the bulwarks against tyranny promoted in the Roman Republic. Of these, the subjection to popular control principle and the empire of law ideal became characteristic of a republic (Lovett 2022, 20-21). Classical and modern republicans have in common this emphasis on how it is up to a proper institutional framework to reduce incidences of domination, which represents the arbitrary power to interfere in another’s life. Modern republicans focus both on private instances of domination, but also on the dangers posed by the state (what Pettit 1997 calls dominium and imperium). To avoid the imperium of the state, Pettit envisions a more active citizenry, in which individuals become guardians of their own freedom, but in a way that avoids the perfectionist identification of a good life with public participation (as in what Berlin 1969 called positive freedom). For that, republicans consider that a reservoir of civic virtue is needed, as it can “bring about the right sort of laws, institutions and norms, and in ensuring their durability and reliability” (Lovett and Pettit 2009, 22). Civic virtue does that in two distinct ways. On one hand, it ensures that citizens are sufficiently motivated to serve the contestatory function that avoiding imperium requires, being characteristic of what Pettit calls a “resistive community” (2012, 219). Such a community is necessary for a contestatory form of democracy, partially motivated by personal interest, but also reflecting citizens’ commitment to adhere to the same set of rules (228). On the other hand, civic republicanism considers that well-functioning forms of democracy represent “a search procedure for identifying and empowering common avowable interests” (Pettit 2001). This mostly takes the form of what Pettit (2000) calls the authorial dimension of democracy, where people represent the indirect authors of policies. But in turn this cannot be done unless the citizens “by and large respect the law, both in letter and spirit, and the shared institutions and practices of the republic generally” (Lovett 2015). It is the worry about the tyranny of the majority that pushes us towards the editorial dimension of democracy, towards “measures designed to increase protection against false positives and to try to ensure that only the common interests of the people dictate what the government does” (Pettit 2000, 127).

Civic republicanism goes to great lengths to avoid the charges of perfectionism associated with the neo-Aristotelian branch known as civic humanism (Rawls 2005, 206; Lovett 2019, 119). It successfully does that by denying the claim that political activity is by itself important. Instead, under modern conditions of division of labor, the “self-ruling demos” should rather be interpreted as “run[ning] on automatic pilot, allowing public decision-making to materialize under more or less unexamined routines” (Pettit 1997, 186). It can still be legitimately called “self-ruling,” according to Pettit, as citizens remain “able to contest decisions at will and, if the contestation establishes a mismatch with their relevant interests or opinions, able to force an amendment” (ibid.). In doing that, however, civic republicanism opens itself to the potential issue that citizens might become so accustomed to the auto-pilot mode that they would become unable to take the wheel. Furthermore, collective action issues might further prevent the citizenry from mobilizing when it would be necessary to safeguard non-domination. In fact, given that the people do not constitute a “group agent,” ¹ we do have reasons to believe that their “ability to control public officials is the fruit of the right institutional environment—one that institutionalizes mechanisms of popular control—and the right political culture, one that gives citizens confidence that enough of their fellow citizens will join in collective action to resist officials’ abuses of power, and instills in them a sense of civic duty to do their bit when enough others do theirs” (Ingham and Lovett 2019, 785). This is possible, according to Ingham and Lovett, “only in a well-ordered republic … , where political institutions and civic culture help them surmount collective action problems” (786).

However, this is only bound to generate further questions: setting aside the matter of institutional configuration, how are we to create that “right political culture”? In other words, the missing piece of the puzzle is an account of norm generation (Kimpell 2023, 40). Paradoxically, setting out to criticize the revival of republicanism, Brennan and Lomasky (2006) are among the first to pinpoint its location: in the concept of social capital. ² But while they consider that “concern for ample reserves of social capital is given better effect through liberalism’s neutral state than by a republican regime empowered to impose from on high preferred social ideals” (229), it is my contention that republicans do not have to rely solely on the state in order to achieve the task of ensuring that social capital (of the right kind) permeates a polity. ³ Pettit had already anticipated this discussion when he warned that caution ought to be exercised by the state where “there is already a good fund of civility available” (1997, 253-4). Labor republicans such as Gourevitch also recognized the peril of “looking to the state to inculcate virtue through coercive socialization,” as this would “only reproduce and entrench dispositions favorable to unjust institutions” (2020, 151).

More specifically, in this article I argue that the answer lies within an apparently vastly different literature—the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, the main output of the Bloomington school. I proceed as follows. In the first section, I briefly present the main tenets of civic republicanism and the instrumental case it makes for civic virtue. The second section is dedicated to showing the role that social capital plays in generating civic virtue. In order to avoid buck-passing the issue of generating civic virtue to generating social capital, in the third section I introduce the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Among the Ostromian design principles (E. Ostrom 2005; Wilson, E. Ostrom, and Cox 2013), I focus on the necessity for nested enterprises—or what has become known as polycentric governance (V. Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren 1961). My argument is that embracing polycentricity constitutes a non-dominating way in which we could promote the “resistive community” that republicanism requires. In a polycentric system, “the resulting independent and potentially overlapping decision-making structures then allow actors to access legal, political, administrative and constitutional remedies afforded by different units of government. Further, in cases of violation of constitutional provisions, individuals need to be capable of and willing to exercise disobedience” (Thiel and Moser 2019, 72). I consider that the empirical results extensively documented in this framework are an appropriate starting point for designing novel republican policies and institutions that can function alongside sufficient levels of trust. Although they come from different intellectual traditions, polycentric approaches and republican theories can not only coexist, but also reinforce each other. The answer to Pettit’s question of how to “design and arrange [laws] so that they nurture the fulfilment of the very civil conditions on which their success as guarantors as non-domination depends?” (1997, 251) can thus be found within polycentric orders. Polycentric approaches offer empirical support to the suggestion made by Geuna that a robust republican political theory ought to take into consideration “the role of social and political conflicts in the creation of the orders and laws in defense of liberty” (2013, 27). Afterwards, I explore more directly the links that we can make between these approaches, with an emphasis on the significance—theoretical but also potentially practical—of connecting republicanism’s normative framework to polycentric approaches.

Republicanism and Civic Virtue

The republican ideal is maximizing expected non-domination (Pettit 2012, 70). ⁴ In order to accomplish this ideal—and thus ensure that individual freedom is guaranteed—the fundamental condition that has to be respected is the absence of arbitrary interference (Pettit 2001, 138; Skinner 2006, 250). The republican toolkit consequently includes any measures that contribute to avoiding arbitrary interference. In order to see why, take Ingham and Lovett’s definition of domination as the situation where “A dominates B if A has an insufficiently constrained ability to deliberately frustrate B’s choice of whether to do x” (2019, 777). If we are to impose such restraints upon the ability of agents to frustrate our choices, republicans consider that we need, among other things, popular control, which modern republicanism equates with democratic control (Lovett 2022, 7). For republicans, legitimacy is attained when citizens have “equal access to a system of popular influence” provided “that system of influence give[s] the state an equally acceptable direction that they are all actually disposed to accept” (Pettit 2012, 170). While this is the condition that has to be satisfied in order for a state to be legitimate, the resilience of republican regimes depends upon institutions of the right kind—freedom as non-domination is an unattainable ideal in the absence of institutionalization (Lovett and Pettit 2009, 17). The state is charged with an important role in reducing instances of dominium—private cases of domination. For republicans, it is necessary that “suitably protective blocks and burdens are in place in order to ensure that no one depends on the good will of others for avoiding interference” (Pettit 2012, 109). For instance, there is an important social justice dimension accompanying the republican project: most republicans argue that citizens need basic resources (Laborde 2010), and that there ought to be both “a basic income grant” as well as “various constraints on excessive wealth inequalities” (Lovett 2022, 111). However, republicans are also concerned about the state’s imperium, arguing for counter-majoritarian measures, for the “empire of law” and for dispersion of power (Pettit 1997, 173-181). The potential acts of domination committed by the state can only be avoided, according to republicans, by also giving citizens the power to contest, at various stages, the measures which would arbitrarily interfere with their commonly avowable interests. A republican polity ought to be “responsive” (Pettit 1997, 195).

It is in the emphasis on this contestatory form of democracy that modern republicans underline the role of civic virtue (Pettit 2013, 171). For Pettit, contestation illustrates the editorial dimension of control that citizens ought to have upon policies. Unless the people can contest decisions taken by the state, they cannot “eliminate those candidate policies and those modes of policy implementation that do not advance common, recognizable interests” (Pettit 2000, 116). “A culture of civic trust” is seen as part of the “background conditions [providing] the infrastructure of non-domination” (Lovett and Pettit 2009, 20). Civic republicans adopt an instrumentalist position on civic virtue, seen as “useful both in bringing about the right sorts of laws, institutions and norms, and in ensuring their durability and reliability” (Lovett and Pettit 2009, 22). This is one of the reasons why some republicans focused on civic education (Maynor 2002; Peterson 2011; Snir and Eylon 2017). The downside is that such approaches do have as a prerequisite what might be called a republican disposition: unless the state is committed to promoting non-domination, fostering civic virtue through state-led institutions would not be a successful strategy, a dilemma identified by republicans such as Gourevitch (2020). ⁵

Before investigating what other strategies to foster civic virtue have been or can be envisioned under these circumstances, it is important to discuss something that I have deliberately avoided so far: defining civic virtue. There are two reasons, the first that within republicanism there is no mutually agreed-upon explanation of what civic virtue actually is. Second, there is no need for such a definition, given that its precise meaning is influenced by each polity’s circumstances. This might be why Lovett and Pettit mention that for republicans committed to the non-domination ideal, it might be “better to speak of civic-minded dispositions rather than civic virtue,” as the latter concept could be considered strongly associated with the positive liberty conception that we are free when we exert our citizenship rights (2009, 24). Lovett describes these dispositions as “a set of behavioral dispositions, not grounded in material interests alone, that contribute to the health and maintenance of a political order regarded on some grounds as desirable”; equally important, this conception “remains agnostic as to the psychological basis for the behavioral disposition in question” (2022, 196). The republican project thrives due to the interplay between carefully crafted institutions and generalized civic minded dispositions (202). It is due to the need to instill such civic minded dispositions that Lovett endorses redistributive measures: in a society marked by extreme inequalities, citizens will not believe that they live in a fair system and won’t be willing to “play by the rules and respect political and social outcomes” (209). For Lovett, civic minded dispositions can be reducible to the willingness to respect the rules of the game, also highlighted by the fact that he considers the establishment of a republic an assurance game: “there are many configurations of basic institutional structures that might serve as stable focal points for cooperation, provided only that everyone has a reasonable assurance everyone else is ready to play by the same set of rules” (224).

This minimal understanding of civic virtue is sometimes neglected in the literature. For instance, Kimpell considers that it is only pursuant to Harrington’s exclusive focus on institutions that republicanism “shed the classical reliance on norms and civic virtue” (2023, 31). Kimpell points out that for earlier republicans—and especially for Machiavelli—there used to be a more prominent role given to norms (38). Furthermore, she considers that modern republicans neglected Tocqueville’s in-depth discussions on the importance of norms. This is why she argues that republicans such as Pettit got to the confusing point where they agree that there ought to be a synergy of laws and norms, but offer no account of “how these fundamental commitments on the part of citizens arise, [of] what generates norms of equal access and influence that shape and constrain their political behavior, including the behavior of those who could dominate because of their resources” (37). However, in his later works, Pettit tried to explain how norms might emerge – especially those “civic-minded dispositions.” For the Pettit of On the People’s Terms, unlike the Pettit of Republicanism, a well-crafted republic might generate “games of acceptability … governed by a norm to the effect that participants should only offer considerations for or against a policy that all can regard as relevant” (2012, 254). This happens only if “a regime is designed to facilitate an individualized, unconditioned and efficacious form of popular influence … bound to give a prominent role to games of acceptability and therefore to generate a range of commonly accepted norms of policy-making” (260). As I argue in the following section, we have multiple reasons to find this prediction accurate.

The easy retort here could be that this is too thin a definition of civic virtue. But I believe that most civic republicans would bite the bullet and embrace a thin definition, lest they fall into the trappings of communitarianism or civic humanism. But even a theoretician much closer to the latter, such as Honohan (2002), considers that “virtues and civic virtue are not discrete qualities, but dispositions which support practices and ways of life”, giving as examples “awareness,” “self-restraint,” “deliberative engagement,” and “solidarity” (160-2). This dispositional understanding of civic virtue is motivated by Pettit given that “laws must be embedded in a network of norms that reign effectively, independently of state coercion, in the realm of civic society” (1997, 241). Gourevitch’s (2020) apparently more substantial definition of civic virtue as “a set of normative attitudes, habits of mind, and spontaneous dispositions individuals must have to show equal concern for their fellow citizens and to support free institutions” (152) can also be interpreted along the same lines. We have a dissenting voice in Costa (2009), who considers that the social and political institutions have to be established so that they “encourage good behavior by providing adequate incentives and disincentives” (414). Nonetheless, she does not think that this is enough, as “the success and self-sustaining of republican government depends in part on the existence of some level of personal virtue that citizens need to cultivate” (415). Part of my argument in this paper is that we do not have to open the individual black box—we do not need to know if individuals in a republican society are truly virtuous. It suffices that they act in ways that convey this. This conjecture is also a rejection of one of Skinner’s earliest discussions on the topic. Skinner (1990) considers that corruption, understood in the classical republican way of a “natural tendency to ignore the claims of our community as soon as they seem to conflict with the pursuit of our own immediate advantage,” is in fact a form of irrationality, an “inability to recognize that our own liberty depends on committing ourselves to a life of virtue and public service” (304). As the remainder of this article should show, we do not need this level of commitment. It’s here that Pettit’s analogy with civic virtue and contestatory dispositions being akin an auto-pilot function comes into force.

But then we are right back to the point of how to instill even that minimal dispositional understanding of civic virtue: “for republican writers, the deepest question of statecraft is … how can naturally self-interested citizens be persuaded to act virtuously?” (Skinner 1990, 304-5). When it is time to take back control of the car, how are we going to solve the inevitable collective action issues and surpass this self-interest (which, as game-theoretic results show, does under certain circumstances lead to outcomes which are worse for everyone involved, as in Prisoners’ Dilemma)? The key to overcoming both of these potential issues is within the concept of social capital, as Maynor states: “social norms will likely require high levels of social capital if they are to be truly effective” (2003, 199).

Social Capital as Part of the Set of Background Conditions Sustaining the Republic

Republicans too often take for granted features not easy to bring about in the absence of social capital. Lovett and Pettit consider that “through collective political action, citizens can bring instances of domination to public attention” (2009, 22). For Pettit, civic vigilance is the only guarantee that “the government will be forced to remain responsive to popular inputs” (2012, 226). Kimpell pointed out that what’s missing is an account of norm generation (2023, 40), herself endorsing a form of Tocquevillian localism, in which “networks of civic, private and public actors” are slowly building a civic culture that promotes “equal access and influence” (40-41). She points out that at various points republican arguments hinged on social capital, and on the “Tocquevillian arguments about the dependency of a well-functioning democracy on an active civil society” (2015, 349). But the problem, according to Kimpell, is that Tocqueville comes from a tradition different from contemporary republicanism:

The problem is that Tocqueville did not argue that local politics and social associations were means for fostering widespread civic virtue and political involvement along republican lines. Rather he was working with a concept that was distinct from that of republicans, but which neo-republicans conflate as synonymous with civic virtue—and that is enlightened self-interest. (Kimpell 2015, 350)

In a nutshell, Kimpell’s counter-argument to the emergent literature connecting social capital, Tocqueville and republicanism ⁶ is parasitic upon the premise that “in republican politics, what matters is the internal motive, not just the external action” (2015, 361). Thus, it is inevitable that she regards republican civic virtue as “more demanding than Tocqueville’s notion of enlightened self-interest” (360). The dominant view does seem to be that Tocqueville was not a republican (Lovett 2022, 262). However, that is not to say that his ideas could not be employed in a republican manner. After all, the value that republicans want to maximize is freedom as non-domination. This normative purpose motivates their endeavors to explain how and why a contestatory citizenry can react against the transgressions of the state institutions. If one can find in Tocqueville part of the toolkit required in order to securing the ideal of non-domination, there is no theoretical inconsistency caused by the fact that Tocqueville himself would not have identified as a republican. Furthermore, “unlike communitarians, republicans do not believe that stability will necessarily require society to become a community of values” (Lovett 2022, 25). In fact, the much thinner form of civic virtue endorsed by modern republicans is compatible with a variety of motivations. Not only does it make republicanism better anchored in the pluralism of today’s societies, but it also allows it to draw inspiration from multiple approaches, even ones associated with different traditions. Pettit does talk about “a motivated variety of virtue … independently reinforced by personal interests and spontaneous investment” (2012, 228). That spontaneous investment can very easily find its origin in Tocqueville’s endorsement of associational exuberance. Even the norm-following that is required for the functioning of republican institutions is something that can function, according to Pettit, irrespective of what drives the citizens: “people come to support norms of public policy-making, whether or not this is something they intend, in virtue of pursuing popular influence over government. And these norms come to direct public decision-making, whether or not this is something that people intend, thereby establishing a popular purpose that government serves” (2012, 251-252). Pettit’s modelling of interactions in a polity as an instance of a game of acceptability carries this irrelevance of why actors behave in the way that they do: “while the operation of an acceptability regime does not mean that things will be done in the most saintly or salutary fashion, the very fact of adopting the acceptability game does testify to a commitment to seeking solidarity in collective decision-making” (259).

This is probably where the compatibility of the republican framework with Tocqueville is most apparent. It is indeed true that “for Tocqueville, patriotic citizens prioritize the general interests of the community and defend their individual and civil liberties not because they are virtuous, but because they realize it is in their self-interest” (Kimpell 2009, 391). On the other hand, it is far from obvious, as Kimpell assumes it to be, that “the cultivation of civic virtue in republicanism is about the proactive and protracted education of citizens’ interests by the state and political culture” (2009, 391). Skinner (1990) shows that we can reconstruct the classical republican emphasis on the perils of corruption as highlighting how on the long term this is only going to generate further harms to the individuals. But in order to motivate individuals to act according to these long-term interests, what is needed in a republican polity is social capital, which at the moment can be interpreted as referring to those “aspects of social structures [that] facilitate certain actions of actors within the structure” (Coleman 1988, S98). Basically, social capital is an umbrella concept standing for “connections among individuals … social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (Putnam 2000, 16).

One of the main components in the literature on social capital that should be of interest for republicans concerns the potential of high levels of social capital to instill trust. In the second part of the paper, I focus on another advantage, which has more to do with the dispersion-of-power dimension of republicanism. Interestingly, the fact that the social trust generated by social capital does not equate political trust (in the public institutions)—and in fact, the former is a weak predictor of the former (Newton 2001, 211)—could actually be an advantage for a republican theory, where what is needed is “eternal vigilance.” As Pettit mentions, there is no tension between the “republican belief in a dispensation of widespread civility and personal trust and the emphasis on maintaining eternal vigilance. For vigilance clearly involves only expressive distrust … to maintain a demanding pattern of expectations [from the authorities]” (1997, 264). Another reason is that, even if, as discussed earlier, a minimalist civic virtue account does not need “virtuous” citizens in a thick understanding of the word, the presence of social capital might, as a byproduct, lead to the emergence of such individuals. Pettit acknowledges that social capital has to predate a thicker understanding of civic virtue: “if there is not a healthy level of civil life in a society, if there is not a sustained pattern of mutual trust, then people do not develop a natural identification with others and a spontaneous commitment to what will advance the interests they share [but instead] they lose the capacity for civility” (1997, 262).

It is through social capital that individuals become accustomed to ways of solving disputes that are compatible with a state of non-domination. And it is through social capital that they might surpass the challenges of collective action should the need rise to contest policies that would endanger non-domination. As Lovett (2015) mentions, “there is no substitute for involving people in the political process when it comes to nurturing civic-minded dispositions.” In communities where social capital levels are high, trust becomes “the ultimate equity” (Wilson 1997, 747). The consolidation of trust is made possible by a variety of practices that allow social capital to build up. In their study on the developmental differences in Italy, Putnam and his colleagues highlight that even the emergence of novel financial institutions such as crediting was made possible by the “institutions of civic republicanism, the networks of associations, and the extension of solidarity beyond the bonds of kinship” (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nonetti 1993, 128). For them, social capital facilitates “spontaneous cooperation” (167). This is important, as it allows republicanism to account for the feasibility of perceiving the citizenry as having to become politically active only when the collective good of non-domination is threatened—it offers an explanation as to why they would be able to take back control of the steering wheel in such moments.

Social capital allows republicans to eschew any need of assuming that individuals are motivated by common-oriented goals. It is true, social capital can transform individual motivations. Furthermore, “the norm that one should forgo self-interest and act in the interests of collectivity” (Coleman 1988, S104) is a form of social capital. But this constitutes a rather indirect process, as prominent analyses of social capital operate with individuals with heterogeneous interests (E. Ostrom 1994, 559).

Importantly, I focus here on what Lewandowski and Streich (2007) label the “political or democratic strand” of social capital, developed by Putnam, which conceives “of social capital as the communal inventory of generalized trust, mutual obligations and shared cooperative attitudes that make democracy work” (Lewandowski and Streich 2007, 591). The critique that they bring to Putnam’s theory is that it does not account for the “deep inequalities inherent in modern civil societies” (592). They hold that in order to solve the problems associated with inequalities, the state ought to play a more active role, including in the regulation and redistribution of social capital (601). A similar point regarding the negative impact upon social trust has also been raised by Cook and Reidhead (2022). This is an interesting and important point—but also one that allows us to turn the structure of the argument a bit on its head. If I have so far focused on what republican political theory might have to gain from turning to social capital, this is a point in which practitioners concerned with social capital might be helped by the establishment of republican institutions. As I mentioned briefly in the previous section, contemporary republicanism is intertwined with the ideas that inequalities are problematic, as they increase the probability of domination. Thus, it seems that generating social capital might also be helped by a republican framework, which in turn would become more robust due to the social capital that would be incrementally generated.

The robustness of social capital is theorized by Putnam as being the consequence of a self-reinforcing effect: “virtuous circles result in social equilibria with high levels of cooperation, trust, reciprocity, civic engagement and collective well-being” (Putnam, Leonardi, and Nonetti 1993, 177). But just because social capital would have this self-reinforcing effect does not account for its emergence. All these positive effects would not help us too much if it were impossible to generate social capital, especially in a non-dominating way. Here the observation that social capital is often a byproduct of other social activities (Putnam, Leonardi and Nonetti 1993, 170; Fukuyama 2001, 7) is going to be crucial. This is, for instance, how Brehm and Rahn (1997) model social capital, as being “a tight reciprocal relationship between civic engagement and interpersonal trust. The more that citizens participate in their communities, the more that they learn to trust others; the greater trust that citizens hold for others, the more likely they are to participate” (1001-2). While there have been many attempts to explain how social capital is generated (see for instance the studies in Hooghe and Stolle 2003), I will focus next on what is arguably one of the most influential approaches in political science, science—the Ostromian Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. As the next section shows, the IAD framework traces the formation of social capital to the process of individuals cooperating to find solutions to problems that they would not be able to solve otherwise. Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues have focused for a long time on how social capital facilitates solving collective action problems, and, relevantly for the purposes of the present paper, how this requires that individuals overcome “selfish incentives and achieve mutually beneficial cooperative ways of getting things done” (Ostrom and Ahn 2009, 20).

Social Capital, Design Principles and Polycentricity

The Institutional Analysis and Development framework is “a general language about how rules, physical and material conditions, and attributes of community affect the structure of action arenas, the incentives that individuals face, and resulting outcomes” (E. Ostrom and V. Ostrom 2004, 133). In the IAD framework—associated with the community of scholars gathering around the Bloomington School—social capital is the outcome of “individuals spending time and energy working with other individuals to find better ways of making possible the achievement of certain ends that in its absence would not be possible” (E. Ostrom 1994, 528). Elinor Ostrom’s studies on how communities of farmers solve irrigation issues showed her that it is within the “adjustment of operational rules” that created the favorable environment for the farmers to “adjust their rules and norms of behavior so that eventually they may approach some of the better potential outcomes that are feasibly achieved given their physical endowments” (1994, 558). For Ostrom, social trust is not a form of social capital, but rather an outcome (Ostrom and Ahn 2009, 22). Whether trust is social capital or simply a byproduct of it ⁷ is not necessarily something that has an impact upon the claim that it is in the interest of safeguarding freedom from non-domination to promote social capital. Rather, it is a dispute that becomes relevant for practitioners. What is important here is that the presence of social capital—manifested in the “dense networks of social exchange”—becomes a “crucial condition for the rise of the norm of generalized reciprocity” (Ostrom and Ahn 2009, 27). In this sense, the existence of social capital is correlated (and probably serves a causal function) with social trust, the “positive expectation about the trustworthiness of the generalized, abstract other” (Robinson and Jackson 2001, 117). Cook and Reidhead concur that it is through social trust that individuals solve collective action problems, highlighting the way the Bloomington School explained the way collective arrangements based on mechanisms picked to a large extent by the users of collective goods as being facilitated by general social trust (Cook and Reidhead 2022, 440).

If we want to understand an action situation, the IAD framework tells us that we have to analyze several variables: participants; positions occupied by participants; the potential outcomes; the set of allowable actions; the control that individuals have over the set of allowable actions; the information that is available to participants; costs and benefits associated to actions (Ostrom 2005, 32). Furthermore, there are several levels of analysis that we can use: meta-constitutional, constitutional, collective choice and operational (Ostrom 2005, 58). The main insight of the IAD framework is that you cannot translate one set of operational rules from one setting to another and expect everything to work properly; the aforementioned variables are bound to differ in distinct action situations, and lead to different outcomes. However, Ostrom mentions that there are eight underlying design principles that at an empirical level characterized “robust common property institutions”: clearly defined boundaries, proportional equivalence between benefits and costs, the existence of collective-choice arrangements, monitoring, graduated sanctions, conflict resolution mechanisms, minimal recognition of rights to organize, and nestled enterprises (2005, 259). Other authors operate with slightly different versions of these principles—Tarko (2017) discusses about a “political representation principle”, according to which “most individuals affected by the rules are included in the collective choice group that can modify these rules” (128). He also reconstructs the minimal recognition of rights to organize principle as a “subsidiarity principle” (which might be especially relevant in the context of the European Union, where this is a built-in principle of the functioning of the institutional framework). Cox, Arnold, and Tomas (2010) operate with a formulation of the design principles inspired by another work of E. Ostrom (1990, 90). In their case, the proportional equivalence between benefits and costs is operationalized as “congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions,” further split into two sub-principles, one referring to the fitness to local conditions and the other to the proportionality of benefits to the “amount of inputs required in the form of labor, material, or money” (Cox, Arnold, and Tomas 2010, 8).

Institutional failures occurring in spite of design principles being respected can be caused by corruption and opportunistic behavior (E. Ostrom 2005, 272), highlighting the importance of social capital. As Ostrom states, the approach that characterizes the IAD framework has at its center “the links between the trust that individuals have in others, the investment others make in trustworthy reputations, and the probability that participants will use reciprocity norms” (E. Ostrom 1998, 12). Anticipating a later discussion, the existence of a high stock of social capital can thus reduce the chances that individuals engage in such opportunistic behavior. One way in which it does that is by increasing the chances that individuals perceive the match between appropriation and provision rules as fair (emphasized by Cox, Arnold and Tomas 2010 as being important for the sustainability of commons management systems).

Although in empirical situations all these design principles are relevant, ⁸ I would like to focus here on the last one, which Ostrom labels “nested enterprises,” but which is known more commonly as reflecting a polycentric system of governance. According to Tarko, what such systems have in common are the multiplicity of independent decision-makers, the existence of a system of rules and norms that constrains them, as well as the fact that their interactions create a complex emergent order (2022, 186). The logic of polycentric systems is inspired by Vincent Ostrom’s vision of self-organizing systems “becom[ing] democratic self-governing systems when those being governed have equal liberty and equal standing in the constitution of an order where rulership prerogatives are subject to effective limits among multiple agents, each exercising a limited public trust” (V. Ostrom 1991, 227). Ostrom views the evolution of the American federal system as a polycentric order, marked by “fragmentation of authority accompanied by contestation and innovation” (1991, 239). The success of such orders is also dependent on the existence of “mutual trust,” which in turn is reinforced by “principles of self-governance” (1991, 272). The IAD framework is usually associated with the identification of proper decision-making arrangements in situations marked by heterogeneity (of interests, preferences, normative outlooks, and even views on human rationality). Aligica and Tarko (2013) consider that polycentricity constitutes a “structural solution” to heterogeneity: “people with different values and perspectives, once allowed the freedom, gather and cooperate in particular co-production processes for the provision of public goods at different levels and in different circumstances” (736).

Although polycentric governance systems are not necessarily successful, ⁹ they do tend to adapt better to changes and seem capable of fitting a multiplicity of contexts (Carlisle and Gruby 2019). As Tarko mentions, “polycentric systems tend to have higher absorption capacities because shocks do not affect simultaneously the whole system in the same way,” due to them “preserving institutional diversity and hence epistemic diversity” (2017, 219). Successful polycentric systems are those that manage to “overcome numerous and interlinked collective action challenges” (Morrison et al. 2023, 489). At first glance, it seems that the dilemma that is yet to be solved is whether social capital (which in turn helps solve collective action problems) is produced through participation in polycentric arrangements, or whether it is a prerequisite for the success of such arrangements. However, there is a potential explanation that offers us a way of not entering this dilemma. Ostrom mentions that “people who are facing extant coordination and collective-action problems have to have sufficient autonomy and incentives to build their own ways of working more effectively together” (E. Ostrom 1999, 202). From this, it seems that social capital is pursuant to the opportunities for participation (included, presumably, those emerging in a polycentric system). However, she also specifies that “social capital may, in fact, improve with use so long as participants continue to keep prior commitments and maintain reciprocity and trust” (E. Ostrom 1999, 179). To this, one must add that with the IAD framework one is still within an institutionalist approach—meaning that, with properly-established institutions, potential lacunae concerning the extant stock of social capital might be alleviated. This means that, once we introduce the IAD framework to the discussion, we have a more reliable way of ensuring that the institutional—norm-adherence duality that republicans also need is maintained. This is also where the role of the republican state should be underlined. The kind of generalized reciprocity that is of utmost importance for republicanism often depends on the presence of bridging ties ¹⁰ that connect different socio-economic groups within communities and, “where such interactions do not naturally occur, forums for interaction can be intentionally created and designed to encourage development of social capital” (Warner 2001, 188). We must not forget that there are a variety of forms that social capital can take. What interests us here is especially bridging social capital (or generalized social capital), which reflects “a broader civic agenda… ultimately achiev[ing] a civil society” (Wallis, Crocker, and Schecther 1998, 258-9).

Bridging social capital is closely related to what Uslaner calls “generalized trust,” entailing a high degree of inclusiveness into one’s moral community (2002, 26-27). According to Uslaner, generalized trust is partially dependent upon the distribution of resources: “perceptions of injustice will reinforce negative stereotypes of other groups, making trust and accommodation more difficult” (2002, 38). In this, generalized trust (and, by extension, bridging social capital) shares with republicanism a concern for the negative role that could be exerted by economic inequalities. As Lovett argues, the citizens’ willingness to “play by the rules” will be negatively affected by inequalities (2022, 222). While this might also turn out to be relevant for achieving freedom from non-domination, for the purpose of this article it is more significant to identify the ways in which the opportunities for participation emerge. On the long run, these are the ones that facilitate fulfilling the editorial aspect of democracy through the opportunities for contestation emerging in such action arenas. In this, I depart from Uslaner’s framework, as for him “the linkages between civic engagement and trust are weak,” parental influences being the important determinants of generalized trust (2002, 93). However, I agree with an anonymous reviewer that Uslaner’s work could address the issue of how trust could be built between different groups (mainly by reducing economic inequalities). Nonetheless, here I rely mostly on the Institutional Analysis and Development framework and on the way the concept of social capital is employed in this framework. Thus, in the next section I take a closer look at the connections between polycentricity and republicanism. The argument that I make is that a polycentric system of governance offers a non-dominating way in which we could promote the resistive republic.

Republicanism and Polycentric Governance

Is simplicity an institutional virtue? Classical republicans offered a negative answer to this inquiry.

Machiavelli recounts an instance when the people of Rome temporarily abandoned key institutions conducive to liberty—the Tribunate—when they created the Ten (Decemvirate) to codify the Roman law. The 10 governed in place of both consuls and tribunes. This streamlining of institutions appears to be a regression from the perspective of republican principles, undermining institutional diversity of mixed government and harking back to the kind of political corruption inherent in the simple regime types famously criticized by Polybius. Such a reversion to institutional simplicity always portends the rise of a tyranny. (McCormick 2011, 85)

We must be careful here—the “streamlining of institutions” that republicans favor should not be one that alienates people from political processes. It is not a kind of over-complication of rules and procedures that would serve no purpose other than to act as a form of gatekeeping. It is, instead, the line of thought that motivated arguments for the mixed constitution, an idea that has been at the center of republicanism since the days of the Roman Republic. ¹¹ While the mixed constitution might not be part of what Lovett calls the “core principles” of republicanism (2022, 8-9; 144), it is an implementation of an idea which for Pettit (1997) is essential in order to avoid the state’s imperium: the dispersion-of-power condition. ¹² It is my contention that one of the forms that the dispersion of power could take in a modern republic is through polycentric governance. Furthermore, polycentric governance could also help bring about the contestatory republic: on one hand, through the stimulation of social capital generation; on the other, at an institutional level, as the formal independence of decision-making centers that characterizes a polycentric governance system can include “some ability to contest adverse actions by other decision centres” (Stephan, Marshall and McGinnis 2019, 31).

In order to understand why, it might be useful to take a look at Pettit’s assessment of one of the rare contemporary instances where political reforms were explicitly modeled on republican principles—Spain during the first mandate of Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero as Prime Minister, between 2004 and 2008. Pettit mentions that the new statutes adopted by the Spanish central government for Catalonia and other autonomous communities contributed to “the dispersion and decentralization of power,” and as such improved the prospects for non-arbitrary and non-dominating governance (Marti and Pettit 2010, 88). The multiplication of centers of power, “with different forums of accountability,” is what goes a long way towards eschewing “factional or sectional interests”; thus, “the empowerment of the autonomous communities within a framework where central government inevitably retails its own role” proves to be important for “keeping government honest and fair” (Marti and Pettit 2010, 89). This is in line with what Pettit called the republican partiality to federations (1997, 179). Embracing polycentricity would also respect Pettit’s urge that we should look beyond the separation of powers in order to respect the dispersion-of-power condition (1997, 178).

Is the self-governance ideal of polycentric approaches (Tarko 2022, 197) compatible with how contemporary accounts of republicanism perceive self-governance? In regard to the former, McGinnis and Elinor Ostrom consider that Vincent Ostrom proposed polycentricity as a way to “establish and protect liberty” in a manner that “embraces the complexity of real-world processes” (2011, 23). They also note the instrumental character of polycentricity, considered to lead to “increased liberty, a wider array of choices available to citizens seeking assistance from public authorities, generation of a richer body of information available to citizens, and easier access to quasi-market arrangements that more closely approximated the efficiency of competitive markets” (2011, 22). Aligica also mentions that “the Ostrom’s work has been avowedly meant to contribute to the creation of a collective cumulative knowledge base to be applied by citizens to governance processes” (2019, 99). It’s unclear what kind of liberty Vincent Ostrom and other authors writing on polycentricity might have endorsed—but given the pluralist character of this approach, it is entirely possible that polycentricity is compatible even with heterogeneous views on freedom among the actors implicated in the relevant decisional arena.

Regarding self-governance and republicanism, having influence over the process of decision-making as well as channels through which to employ that influence in a meaningful way are seen by republicans as being essential to avoiding domination (Pettit 2012, 153). The idea of popular control is intended to lend robustness to non-domination (Lovett 2022, 128). Whereas when it comes to national politics contemporary republicans ¹³ converge upon the idea of democracy as the way of realizing the idea of popular control (Rostboll 2015, Lovett 2022), they also mention that “republicans are free to embrace legal orders adapted to local circumstances: what optimally reduces domination in one place and time may not in another” (Lovett 2022, 99). Ideally, these legal orders would also respect the constraints of democratic procedures, especially if we are committed to a version of republicanism that sees the relation between non-domination and democracy as symbiotic (as Rostboll 2015 does). The republican ideal of non-domination is easily expandable to a variety of social relations and social environments (workplace, family, international system) because in order to realize it, you have to take a closer look at any sort of interaction that might generate domination: “another guideline is that every respect in which people are exposed to the application of coercive force by other persons or groups should be treated alike as potentially constituting domination, and thus should be controlled by law so far as reasonably possible” (Lovett 2022, 100). And this is why I believe that the non-domination ideal could be realized through polycentric processes of governance, irrespective of how we answer the question that opened this paragraph. Polycentric orders do entail this potential of control exercised at different levels by different individuals engaged in different institutions, as Wagner (2005) emphasizes: “the arrangements of governance that a free people might develop can plausibly be thought of as involving both fragmentation and overlapping among jurisdictions, with the various jurisdictional boundaries being an emergent feature of openly competitive processes” (184-185). This is a principle that has also been highlighted in discussions regarding the role that local governments might have in promoting social capital: “to effectively build social capital, local government must share autonomy with citizens, shifting its emphasis from controller, regulator and provider to new roles as catalyst, convener and facilitator” (Wallis, Crocker, and Schechter 1998, quoted in Warner 2001, 189; see also the following discussion on the concept of coproduction).

The relation between republicanism and polycentricity, however, is not unilateral—as McGinnis and Elinor Ostrom (2011, 17) illustrate, polycentric systems are not necessarily fair. What they do is open up a system so that new venues are created for citizens and officials to engage in negotiations regarding particular issues that each community might face (McGinnis and Ostrom 2011, 17). This means that although polycentric governance usually leads to positive outcomes (Ostrom 2010; Rayner and Jordan 2013), this is not a given (Carlisle and Gruby 2019, 929). This is consistent with earlier experimental results showing that “when individuals are given an opportunity to restructure their own situation, they frequently—but not always—use this opportunity to make credible commitments and achieve higher joint outcomes without an external enforcer” (E. Ostrom, Walker, and Gardner 1992, 414). When the action arena is marked by morally arbitrary characteristics, that is the moment when the functions usually exercised by polycentric governance are subdued. For instance, the learning-together feature of polycentric collaborative processes, which also allows citizens to “hold public officials accountable and press for more effective and efficient policies” might be underprovided by the lack of inclusion of minorities (Koontz 2019, 117). Republicanism possesses several other mechanisms through which this lack of inclusion might be prevented from the start. These institutional measures could still be defended and endorsed independently of polycentric-focused approaches (among these measures one could find federalism, ¹⁴ bicameral arrangements, the existence of a bill of rights, judicial review). ¹⁵ The main role that would be served by polycentric governance systems is facilitating the emergence of social capital, seen in turn as favoring the cultivation of civic-minded dispositions. This means that, in practice, it is quite possible that there would be a mutually beneficial symbiosis between republicanism and polycentric governance; the ideal of non-domination would be facilitated by the flexibility and heterogeneity of institutional arrangements that polycentric systems are associated with, while the efficiency of the latter would be boosted by other policies taken in a republican state.

Although polycentricity embodies a “predilection toward negotiation and commonly agreed solutions” (Aligica 2014, 22), it does account for the possibility of conflict. In fact, it might be the case that “a system based on countervailing powers has built into it, by design, tensions and conflict” (Aligica 2019, 103). In fact, “polycentric governance may promote contestation and even conflict among decision-centres in ways that facilitate the representation and articulation of differing interests, as well as agreements among centres for how to cooperate on common goals. Through these processes, people may develop and reinforce methods for the necessary exercise of governing power, while guarding against excesses that stifle dissenting voices or exacerbate ethnic, religious or other dimensions of social differences” (Thiel, Blomquist, and Garrick 2019, 16). Whether or not they succeed in doing that is based in turn on the institutional arrangement characterizing a particular polycentric governance system: “self-organization under polycentric governance hinges on the question of whether and to what degree the overarching rules encourage, allow, discourage, or prohibit it, along with exit and voice” (Thiel and Moser 2019, 75). Much of this paper implicitly focused on how polycentricity facilitates voice, and the importance of this feature for realizing a resistive republic. However, an argument could be made that one of the advantages of polycentric systems is that they offer opt-out opportunities for participants to such systems (Kurrild-Klitgaard 2010, 344) which would also be propitious for maximizing freedom from domination. ¹⁶ It is in that vein that Warren endorses exit-based empowerments, considered as “central to the design and integrity of democracy” (2011, 684), ¹⁷ giving the examples of marriage and property laws reforms that facilitated the previously inaccessible option that women leave problematic marriages (2011, 691).

Returning to the matter of voice, resorting to a polycentric framework also offers venues for reconceptualizing certain republican perspectives which might sound counterintuitive and counterproductive to the goal of non-domination in contemporary societies. For example, Machiavelli considered “the first cause of keeping Rome free” to be “the tumults between the nobles and the plebs” (1996, 72). However, the downfall of the Roman republic was associated with a move from peacefully settling conflicts in the Forum to “physical domination becom[ing] a crucial weapon in politics” (Millar 2002, 125). This move came in the context of a general degradation of norm-adherence (141-2). But how to prevent such norm degeneration? As Tarko, Schlager, and Lutter (2019) mention, in order for polycentric governing arrangements marked by self-rule and shared rule to function, “monitoring, conflict resolution, and sanctioning mechanisms are necessary to support compliance with governing agreements and build commitment to constitutions” (236). Given that polycentric arrangements, especially in the presence of social capital (which might be generated and re-generated through these arenas for interaction) offer such conflict resolution mechanisms, it is probable that such “tumults” that some republican writers have endorsed would not degenerate within these arrangements. As such, polycentric governance could help constitute a resistive republic.

Recently, Vincent Ostrom was regarded as representing a continuation of an intellectual tradition that spans “from Polybius to the Federalists” (Aligica 2019, 102). That is not to say that he employed for the same purposes or in the same way concepts such as the necessity of dispersing power as republicans did—but this does not mean that polycentric approaches could not be of help to republicanism. Furthermore, although much of the literature on polycentricity is of empirical nature, its normative implications started to be analysed as well; these implications are purportedly “evident in the traditional Tocqueville-inspired literature that has been so important for the Bloomington scholars” (Aligica 2019, 87). As for the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework in general, its normative dimension has always been prominent: “Elinor Ostrom argue[d] that a greater portion of formal studies should consist of the political science, economics, and ethics needed to preserve a Tocquevillian vision of democracy to make up for the loss of practical experience of voluntary association” (Humphries 2020, 165). Vincent Ostrom shares a similar outlook when he discusses about the conditions for self-governance: “a Tocquevillian science of association—a body of knowledge that helps us to understand the nature of social order, and the forms of social interaction that lead to mutual advantage—is the foundation for choosing among the institutional alternatives open to us” (Aligica 2009).

Thus, there is this imperfect common ground that should be familiar to both republican and Bloomington scholars. Furthermore, both approaches operate at the level of the individual (in fact, many of the institutional prescriptions that republicans advance could be considered similar to those put forth by liberals, according to Ferejohn 2013). It is the imperfection of this common ground that can also account for the fact that Vincent Ostrom highlighted the necessity of “shared communities of understanding” ¹⁸ for democratic systems, which, as an anonymous reviewer pointed out, might seem at first glance to be in tension with the statement that “republicans do not believe that stability will necessarily require society to become a community of values” (Lovett 2022, 25):

Without a background of common knowledge, a shared community of understanding about making appropriate normative distinctions, a system of social accountability for monitoring and enforcing rules, and a substantial degree of public trust that rule-ordered relationships will be adhered to, there is no basis for assigning autonomy to individuals to exercise responsibility for the actions they take in the governance of their own affairs and in relating to others.(V. Ostrom 1997, 96)

However, I believe that there is a compatibility between conceiving democracy as an acceptability game (as Pettit 2012 does) and Vincent Ostrom’s (1997) focus on how “cooperative activities depend on undertaking contingent agreements subject to plausible commitments” (113). The thinner concept of civic virtue employed by many neo-Roman republicans is not at odds with how Vincent Ostrom conceptualizes the need for common knowledge and mutual trust, conceived as being “at least as important as the economic and political conditions” (114). Furthermore, the concept of shared community of understanding can ultimately be understood as “accruing as a form of social capital” (V. Ostrom 1997, 214), which means that we might interpret it in a thinner way as well. Thus, I believe that while the concepts with which V. Ostrom and republicans operate are distinct, they remain compatible.

The republican ideals of a resistive republic and of a contestatory form of democracy could therefore be aided by employing polycentric mechanisms, which in turn would stimulate the generation of social capital. At the meta-constitutional level, we would have the value of non-domination, which would be co-produced through the polycentric arrangements established at the constitutional level. ¹⁹ The editorial role of citizenry and the accompanying contestatory conception of democracy prevalent in modern republicanism reflects a similar structure to the concept of coproduction (Parks et al. 1981). The coproduction model assumes that “consumer production is an essential complement to the efforts of regular producers,” and in the absence of this contribution, “nothing of value will result” (Parks et al. 1981, 1001-2). The coproduction of non-domination could be considered what Aligica calls “a scenario in which the inputs are interdependent and non-substitutable” (2019, 77). Aligica argues that self-governance could be considered as a process of coproduction (79). A similar case can be made for non-domination: in the absence of citizens fulfilling their editorial role, policies that track their common avowable interests would not be guaranteed. It is solely through this contestatory role that the prospects for freedom from domination would be enhanced. Polycentric governance favours this contestatory conception of democracy—as, in such a system, “individuals need to have the right to contest governmental decisions in courts and seek remedies” (Thiel and Moser 2019, 73). This seems to be in line with other arguments made within the polycentric literature. In a discussion regarding the coproduction of knowledge governance, López (2021) highlights the importance of what he calls “the degree of individual sovereignty” in the coproduction of knowledge governance (108). Analogously to the republican distinction between the dual peril of imperium and dominium, López states that “individual sovereignty is not exclusively about state infringement on the individual sphere of authority as defined by formal rules such as constitutions and legislations [but also] by state rules that attenuate otherwise eligible members’ access to boundary rules, or by state action that distorts organic within-group rules [and by] nonstate positions of power in a community” (2021, 110). Had it not been for the distinct value of individual sovereignty (which, contextually, López associates with freedom of expression), this argument would have been right at home within republican accounts. For instance, it is the concern with the arbitrary power of the state to shape the boundary of the demos that directs several contemporary writers to endorse voting rights for non-citizens (Benton 2010; Sager 2014). ²⁰

There is another sense in which polycentricity might help achieve non-domination. Pettit mentions that there are three important areas of policy-making that contribute to establishing a framework for enjoying freedom from domination. One of these concerns infrastructural programs, which basically create the minimal conditions that are needed in order to avoid domination: things such as a system of education, an effective public health system, and an efficient transportation system (Pettit 2012, 111). While there is no guarantee that polycentric systems will be efficient (Blomquist and Schroder 2019), they usually favour the adoption of operational rules that are better suited to the particular contexts. This statement is especially valid when what is needed in order to provide a collective good at a sufficient level is surpassing collective action problems: “increasing the authority of individuals to devise their own rules may well result in processes that allow social norms to evolve and thereby increase the probability of individuals better solving collective action problems” (E. Ostrom 2000, 154). After all, there is a large literature that analyses the numerous cases in which locally made institutional arrangements proved to be successful and demonstrate robustness in the face of adversity (a list of applications of the IAD framework is offered in Polski and Ostrom 2017, 36-40).

Conclusions

In this paper I aimed to explore the ties that can be established between political science and political thought, and more specifically the way we can use theoretical insights from the literature on social capital in order to improve the prospects for contemporary republicanism. I started from the premise that republicans too often take for granted features not easy to bring about in the absence of social capital, such as the citizens’ potential to become mobilized when faced with cases of domination (Lovett and Pettit 2009, 22). However, as Kimpell mentions, what is missing here is an account of norm generation (2023, 40). I aimed to show how this could occur in a way that does not constitute itself an arbitrary interference of the government in the people’s lives. The kind of generalized reciprocity which is of utmost importance for republicanism often depends on the presence of bridging ties that connect different socio-economic groups within communities and, “where such interactions do not naturally occur, forums for interaction can be intentionally created and designed to encourage development of social capital” (Warner 2001, 188).

A central claim that I made was that Pettit’s “resistive community” (2012, 219) could be promoted in a non-dominating way by embracing polycentric governance. My argument was that the empirical results extensively documented in this framework constitute an appropriate starting point for designing novel republican policies and institutions whose resilience is ensured by the generation and re-generation of arenas for interaction opened within polycentric systems. In a nutshell, civic-minded dispositions would be instilled by citizens participating in various polycentric structures, highlighting the social-learning benefit of collaborative processes of the kind that characterize polycentric governance systems (Koontz 2019, 117). These results could also shed more light on Lovett’s (2015) intuition that civic-minded dispositions are mostly cultivated through participating in political processes. Polycentric systems could offer citizens more arenas for interaction, thus increasing the prospects for higher levels of social capital, and, ultimately, of those civic-minded dispositions. I believe that this claim functions in spite of the fact that polycentric orders do not always lead to acceptable outcomes—in fact, the whole discussion is also based on the premise that there could be a symbiotic relationship between polycentricity and republicanism, in which a polycentric structure would also have something to gain by pursuing republican ideals. This reflects a recommendation made within the polycentric literature that polycentric structures’ “autonomy and freedom to innovate needs to be balanced with accountability mechanisms to ensure compliance with shared rules, pursuit of common goals,” in order to avoid that they become “co-opted opportunistically for aims incongruent with sustainability and equity” (Fortnam et al. 2022, 96). Albeit the article presumes that republicans would have something to gain (theoretically, by gaining a more solid explanation for norm-generation, and practically, by leading to the nourishment of social capital due to interactions taking place in polycentric structures) by employing the concept of polycentricity, it does also consider that polycentric orders themselves would be transformed in this process.

The article’s importance stems from the fact that the stability of democratic institutions, the way a plurality of conceptions of the good can converge in a functioning way in a modern society, the role civil society plays in the maintenance or freedom, and the question of legitimacy—ideas central to the republican project—represent topics whose importance is not limited to political theory. As Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) mention, the functioning of the American republic could be accounted for by the establishment of “a set of shared beliefs and practices that helped make those institutions work,” such as “treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and underutilizing one’s institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play.” Civic republicanism does not constitute a panacea to the dangers that await modern democracies; ²¹ however, its preoccupation with norms, generating trust and institutional stability could go a long way towards reducing these risks. I set out to identify here new ways in which future republican experiments could realize their ideals. I argued that one way of doing that would be by starting from real-world examples in which collective action succeeds, and which were studied in the institutional analysis and development framework. A future research agenda could analyze the extent to which non-domination is promoted within already functioning polycentric systems.

This future research agenda could also benefit from taking into account a wider variety of contexts, given that the present paper has employed cases and literature based mostly on the American context. ²² After all, that is the beauty of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, and probably one of the most significant reasons why contemporary republicanism would only stand to gain by engaging with this literature: that it is based on the idea that adaptation to local contexts is important for the success of policy-making. This means that depending on the specific circumstances that we encounter, different policies and measures might function. There is no unique recipe for generating norms: “comparative studies of rules used in long-surviving resource systems governed by traditional societies document the wide diversity of rules used across sectors and regions of the world” (E. Ostrom 2009, 421).

Furthermore, polycentric governance systems are not confined to the American space. They have emerged in a variety of contexts, such as the governance of biosphere reserves and marine parks in Southeast Asia (Fortnam et al. 2022), sharing water commons in the Rajasthan State of India (Bruns 2019), or the management of marine resources in Chile (Ebel 2020), to name just a few. Polycentric systems are also better suited at dealing with change, due to their “adaptive capacity” (Pahl-Wostl 2009). As Carlisle and Gruby (2019) mention, “perhaps the most commonly cited theoretical advantage of polycentric governance systems in the commons literature is that they may be capable of adapting to actual or anticipated social and ecological change better than more centralized forms of governance” (937). All these cases and others could very well be the subject of future empirical research trying to observe to what extent they promote, or are compatible with, freedom from domination, as one of the main conjectures of this article is that embracing polycentricity constitutes a non-dominating way of promoting a republican resistive community, as it entails creating as a byproduct the social capital necessary for norm-generation. As such, it represents a potential solution to one of the significant theoretical challenges that civic republicanism has recently faced.