Liberal vs. Republican Notions of Freedom
| Author | Ronen Shnayderman |
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00900.x |
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 2 VO L 6 0 , 4 4 – 5 8
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00900.x
Liberal vs. Republican Notions of Freedompost_90044..58
Ronen Shnayderman
Nuffield College, University of Oxford and European University Institute
One of the most interesting current debates about the ideal of freedom is the debate between the adherents of the
recently revived republican notion of negative freedom, most notably Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, and
the adherents of the prevailing liberal notion of negative freedom, most notably Ian Carter and Matthew Kramer. The
debate between these two parties concerns the question of what negative freedom is.While Carter and Kramer argue
that negative freedom is simply the absence of interference, Skinner and Pettit argue that negative freedom is first and
foremost the absence of arbitrary power to interfere (or, in short, domination) and only in a secondary sense also the
absence of interference. In this article I argue that the republican notion of negative freedom is implausible, since it
entails that situations involving only domination are as inimical to negative freedom as situations involving both
domination and dominating interference; and, moreover, that Pettit and Skinner themselves find the idea that these two
situations are equally inimical to negative freedom implausible.
Keywords: freedom; republicanism; liberalism; domination; interference
Over the last three decades or so there has been a growing interest in republican political
theory, which is due mainly to the works of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit. In their
writings Skinner and Pettit appeal to the classical republican tradition in order to challenge
the current dominant political theory of liberalism by questioning its understanding of
freedom.
The development of Skinner’s and Pettit’s theory of freedom can be divided into two
different phases. The first, for which Skinner alone is responsible, consists of two central
arguments.1 The first argument is that the republican tradition did not revolve around a
positive notion of freedom which consists in actually performing certain activities or
exercising certain faculties or attaining certain goals. More specifically, Skinner argued
that, contrary to the prevalent view at the time in which he started to explore the
republican tradition, this tradition did not identify freedom with the exercise of civic
virtue through active political participation. According to Skinner, the thinkers belonging
to this tradition were concerned with the same notion of freedom that concerned their
liberal successors, that is, negative freedom as the absence of interference. The second
argument is that while republicans and their liberal successors were concerned with the
same notion of freedom, the latter, as opposed to the former, were blind to the condi-
tions under which it can best be realised. Particularly, Skinner argued that because of
their commitment to some other ideas, liberals were unable to see the republican insight
that freedom as the absence of interference cannot be realised, at least not for long, in
a society whose members do not fulfil their civic duty of taking an active part in its
political life; and hence that in order to secure their freedom as non-interference people
have to be motivated and sometimes even forced to break out of their private sphere and
enter the political arena. In the first phase Skinner did not complain, therefore, about the
liberal notion of freedom as such. His complaint was that liberalism is necessarily blind
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
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to the instrumental link between the preservation of freedom as the absence of inter-
ference and civic virtue.
The second phase, which was introduced originally by Pettit2 and has recently been
endorsed also by Skinner (1998; 2006; 2008),3 who seems to have relinquished his afore-
mentioned position, is much more radical. In contrast to the first phase it does try to
challenge the liberal notion of freedom as such. Thus, unlike the first phase, it consists of
only one central argument, according to which, while the republican thinkers did not
indeed hold a positive notion of freedom, they did not hold the liberal notion of freedom
either. Instead, they held a different notion of negative freedom which is said to be superior
to the one held by liberals. This notion does not identify negative freedom only with the
absence of interference. It identifies it first and foremost with the absence of arbitrary power
to interfere (or, in short, domination), and only in a secondary sense also with the absence
of interference. Thus, the republican notion of freedom is said to be superior to the liberal
notion because it is more sensitive to the different ways in which our negative freedom can
be restricted. While it sees both domination and interference as inimical to our negative
freedom (though not equally so), the liberal notion of freedom recognises only the lesser
evil against it.
Now, both phases of the development of the republican theory of freedom have been
criticised sharply. The criticism of the first phase asserts that there is nothing in the liberal
credo as such that prevents it from seeing the instrumental connection between civic virtue
and the notion of freedom as non-interference. According to this criticism, in so far as
liberal thinkers have ignored this connection it was nothing more than a contingent matter
(Patten, 1996, pp. 28–36; Kramer, 2003, pp. 105–24). The criticism of the second phase
carries a similar message. It asserts that the liberal notion of freedom as non-interference can
account for the freedom-restricting nature of domination, and hence that Pettit’s and
Skinner’s rejection of it is unjustified. According to this criticism, in so far as liberal theorists
have failed to notice the adverse effect that domination has on negative freedom this was
a result of their failure to appreciate some features of their own notion of freedom, rather
than of its insensitiveness to the freedom-restrictive nature of domination.4
However, while the former criticism has been left unanswered (presumably because
Skinner himself no longer holds the view it criticises),5 the latter criticism, put forward by
Ian Carter and Matthew Kramer, has been resisted by both Skinner and Pettit. Accordingly,
only the latter debate will be addressed in this article. In order to clarify what this article
aims to do we need first to take a very brief look at this debate (a more detailed account
of it will be provided in the next section).
Carter’s and Kramer’s criticism relies primarily on their claim that the overall extent of
freedom as non-interference we enjoy at time t is a function of, inter alia, the probability at
t that we will suffer interferences in the future, which is independent of the question of
whether or not we will indeed be interfered with in the sense that once the probability has
been specified correctly at t it is not subsequently undermined by either the occurrence or
the non-occurrence of any actual interferences. Given that, as a matter of empirical fact,
people who are exposed to arbitrary power at t are more likely to be interfered with in the
future than people who are not exposed to arbitrary power at t, they argue that, ceteris
paribus, the former are less negatively free at t than the latter. Thus, the notion of freedom
© 2011 The Author. Political Studies © 2011 Political Studies Association
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RO N E N S H N AY D E R M A N
as non-interference can account for the republican claim that the mere exposure to
arbitrary power, as distinct from its exercise, has an adverse effect on our negative freedom.
Pettit’s and Skinner’s most important objection to this argument is that it maintains that
negative freedom is affected adversely by arbitrary power only in proportion to the
probability that that power will be exercised. And hence, given the empirical nature of its
second premise regarding the positive correlation between degrees of arbitrary power and
the probability of future interferences, which (at least in theory) admits exceptions, it entails
that when we are exposed to the arbitrary power of a person who is extremely unlikely to
exercise his or her power our negative freedom remains, pro tanto, virtually intact. In Pettit’s
and Skinner’s view it does not make sense to say, for example, that a slave whose master is
extremely unlikely to interfere with his or her life is, pro tanto, negatively freer than a slave
whose master is very likely to interfere with his or her life, since neither of them possesses
any degree of negative freedom whatsoever. In their view it is the mere fact that a slave is
exposed to the master’s absolute arbitrary power to interfere with his or her life, not the
degree of the probability that the master will exercise it, that renders him or her wholly
bereft of negative freedom. The extent to which arbitrary power restricts negative freedom,
they argue, is independent of how likely it is that that power will be exercised.
The most important bone of contention between these two parties is, then, whether or
not these kinds of situation involve a substantial restriction on negative freedom. Whereas
Carter and Kramer insist that saying that they do is implausible, Pettit and Skinner insist that
saying that they do not is implausible. In this...
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