Building Blocks of a Republican Cosmopolitanism
| Author | Lena Halldenius |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885109349394 |
| Published date | 01 January 2010 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Building Blocks of a Republican
Cosmopolitanism
The Modality of Being Free
Lena Halldenius Malmö University
abstract: A structural afnity between republican freedom as non-domination
and human rights claims accounts for the relevance of republicanism for cosmopolitan
concerns. Central features of republican freedom are its institution dependence and
the modal aspect it adds to being free. Its chief concern is not constraint, but the way
in which an agent is constrained or not. To the extent I am vulnerable to someone’s
dispositional power over me I am not free, even if I am not in fact constrained.
Republican freedom adds a substantial element to a justication of human rights in
terms of entitlement, rather than mere satisfaction of interests. A satised interest is
not a satised right if the satisfaction is dependent on personal goodwill and can be
withdrawn at any time. Like republican freedom, human rights claims add a modal
aspect to enjoyment. Both can be violated by institutional arrangement alone and
can be secured only within accountable institutions. National borders may well be
irrelevant to the dispositional powers to which people are vulnerable. An international
set of institutions globalizes those circumstances in which republican liberty arises as a
concern.
key words: cosmopolitanism, dispositional power, institutions, human rights, law,
non-domination, republican freedom
Republican Freedom
My aim here is to identify certain aspects of the republican position on freedom as
building blocks of a republican cosmopolitanism. The beauty, I find, of a cosmo-
politan position formed out of republican concerns is that it will be political rather
than moral, institutional rather than attitudinal. I will not develop such a theory
here. What I will do is draw some analytical strands together in order to see on
what basis it could be developed. Proceeding from my interpretation of what
republican freedom is and under what circumstances it arises as a concern, I will
concentrate on the role played within it by dispositional power and institutions.
Republican freedom makes sense only in an institutional setting; it is institution-
article
Contact address: Lena Halldenius, Department of Global Political Studies,
Malmö University, SE-20506 Malmö, Sweden
Email: lena.halldenius@mah.se
EJPT
European Journal of Political Theory
9(1) 12–30
© The Author(s), 2010
Reprints and permission: http://www.
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
[DOI: 10.1177/1474885109349394]
http://ejpt.sagepub.com
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Halldenius: Building Blocks of a Republican Cosmopolitanism
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dependent. This means, among other things, that a person is free in the republican
sense always in a particular capacity: the capacity of an institutional agent or citi-
zen, widely conceived. Freedom expresses not only what obstacles there are or
not, what one is able or allowed to do and be or not, but also and importantly
the way in which I am hindered or not, able or not, allowed or not. Republican
freedom adds a modal aspect to being free. I enjoy my actual opportunities freely
or unfreely depending on my position in relation to those who hold dispositional
power over me, and the institutional setting within which we coexist. This modal
aspect of being free accounts for the structural affinity between republican free-
dom and human rights understood as valid claims, as I hope to show.
Features of Republican Freedom
In The Second Treatise of Government John Locke discusses how being free relates
to living under law. In this discussion he specifies what freedom in society is.
Importantly he does not regard law as a limitation on freedom but instead as
necessary for it. Liberty is to be ‘free from restraint and violence of others’, but
not any absence of restraint and violence will do, only such that is protected by
law. Freedom, he insists, is not to do whatever one has a wish to, but to dispose of
one’s person and property as the law allows and within that allowance ‘not to be
subject to the arbitrary Will of another’. In an aside he adds: ‘For who could be
free, when every other Man’s Humour might domineer over him?’1
My ambition here is not to position Locke in relation to the varied and complex
republican tradition, nor to disentangle the freedom doctrine of that tradition.2 I
wish merely to point out that in these passages we find clearly expressed certain
features of republican thinking on freedom. One such is that the very existence
of law does not restrict freedom but nor does it liberate in any straightforward
sense. The existence of (natural or civil) law – a legal condition or a legal mode of
life – does not merely work on the level of determining the extent of a person’s
freedom. It is prior to that. A legal mode of life is one condition that has to obtain
for the issue of freedom to arise. Without it one is neither free nor unfree. Law
as an institution is, as I will call it here, one of the circumstances of freedom, an
issue which I will address shortly.
The other feature is that the extent of a person’s freedom is not determined by
the extent to which she is constrained but rather by the mode of her being con-
strained or not. This means two things: first, even if she is de facto constrained she
may remain completely free, and second, even if she is under no actual constraint
she may be in an unfree, subjected state. First then, an actual constraint does not
affect the extent of a person’s freedom at all if the constraint is an expression of
law ‘in its true Notion’ directing intelligent agents to their proper interests (‘that
ill deserves the Name of Confinement which hedges us in only from Bogs and
Precipices’). Second, and in a way more revealing in terms of republican affinities,
she may be free in empirical terms to do whatever she likes but still be unfree in
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