Introduction
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885109349720 |
| Date | 01 January 2010 |
| Author | Duncan Bell |
| Published date | 01 January 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Introduction
Symposium: Republicanism and
Global Justice
Duncan Bell University of Cambridge
Questions about global justice today stand at the very centre of debate in politi-
cal theory.1 Reflecting this interest, Thomas Nagel contends that the ‘need for
workable ideas about the global or international case presents political theory
with its most important current task’.2 Thinkers of many stripes have taken up
this challenge with vigour and ingenuity. In this symposium, five scholars – Lena
Halldenius, Duncan Ivison, Cécile Laborde, Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner
– address some of the ways in which republican political theory, and republican
conceptions of freedom in particular, can contribute to the task.
Republicanism is a loose term of art, open to diverse interpretations.
Contemporary scholarship might be divided, albeit crudely, into two main camps:
one which focuses on an Aristotelian ‘civic’ variant, associated above all with the
work of J. G. A. Pocock and his followers, and another which delineates a ‘neo-
Roman’ line of argument, a perspective defended most influentially by Quentin
Skinner and Philip Pettit.3 This divergence over the content and scope of repub-
lican political thinking helps to account for the plethora of (often conflicting)
positions classified as republican, both in the history of political thought and in
contemporary political theory. Proponents of the Aristotelian interpretation have
not, as yet, contributed widely to the philosophical debates over global justice.4
Despite their various disagreements, the contributors to this symposium all con-
ceive of republicanism as a body of political theorizing centred on arguments
about freedom as non-domination. This account has a long and distinguished
history, a history in which the relations between political communities plays a
pivotal role. As Skinner notes in his commentary, early modern republican theo-
rists recognized that the question of individual freedom – of what it meant to be
a ‘freeman’ – was intimately connected to the freedom of the state. The two were
inseparable. Freedom can only be secured, as Pettit argues in his essay, ‘in an
9
article
Contact address: Duncan Bell, Department of Politics and International Studies,
University of Cambridge.
Email: dsab2@cam.ac.uk
EJPT
European Journal of Political Theory
9(1) 9–11
© The Author(s), 2010
Reprints and permission: http://www.
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[DOI: 10.1177/1474885109349720]
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