Three Models of Republican Rights: Juridical, Parliamentary and Populist
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321716648339 |
| Author | Guy Aitchison |
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716648339
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(2) 339 –355
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0032321716648339
journals.sagepub.com/home/psx
Three Models of Republican
Rights: Juridical,
Parliamentary and Populist
Guy Aitchison
Abstract
The republican tradition in political theory offers a distinct approach to thinking about rights that
addresses long-standing objections to the depoliticising logic of the discourse through its attention
to power relations and the socially embedded nature of moral claims. However, the most systematic
republican theories of rights-based citizenship translate these theoretical commitments into a tame
set of institutional proposals that largely affirm existing states. In this article, I critique the limits
of Philip Pettit’s juridical republicanism and Richard Bellamy’s parliamentary republicanism and
set out an alternative populist account of republican citizenship based on the notion of rights as
‘claims’ – a form of speech act that empowers agents with self-respect to mobilise popular support
and challenge arbitrary power when political institutions are unresponsive or unavailable. Populist
citizenship takes place whenever social groups and classes mobilise directly outside constitutional
structures in order to contest the legitimacy of the political regime and lay claim to new rights
through direct appeal to the sovereign authority of the people themselves.
Keywords
rights, human rights, populism, citizenship, republicanism
Accepted: 31 March 2016
A recurring criticism of the discourse of rights is that its orientation towards purportedly
decisive moral norms detracts from the cold, hard facts of political life in potentially
counter-productive and anti-democratic ways. Abstract appeals to natural law, human
dignity or whichever foundational norm is thought to ground rights, critics say, detract
from the difficult practical questions of how rights are implemented in real-world politi-
cal societies marked by pluralism and disagreement, material scarcity, weak and corrupt
institutions and entrenched social hierarchies. In contemporary political theory, this con-
cern with the depoliticising logic of rights underlies a number of different theoretical
Max Weber Programme, European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Corresponding author:
Guy Aitchison, Max Weber Programme, European University Institute, Via dei Roccettini 9, 50014 San
Domenico di Fiesole, Florence, Italy.
Email: Guy.Aitchison@eui.eu
648339PSX0010.1177/0032321716648339Political StudiesAitchison
research-article2016
Article
340 Political Studies 65 (2)
projects and perspectives. It can be found in the writings of neo-Kantians who argue that
universal proclamations of human rights are ‘hollow’ without attention to how the corre-
sponding duties are to be institutionally enforced (James, 2003; O’Neill, 2000); theorists
of human rights sensitive to the role the concept plays in international affairs (Beitz,
2009; Raz, 2010); and radical critics who seek to unmask the concept’s ideological role
in naturalising capitalist social relations beyond collective contestation (Brown, 2004;
Douzinas, 2000). While these critiques differ in their motivations and substantive conclu-
sions, they share a common scepticism towards a form of rights-based liberalism that
treats rights as the moral property of isolated individuals, which can be traced back to
early theoretical opponents of natural rights (Waldron, 2014).
This article examines how republicanism – a tradition of thought centrally concerned
with political action and participation – can contribute to our understanding of the politi-
cal nature of rights and how they are best realised and protected in contemporary socie-
ties. Although the dominant ‘neo-Roman’ school of republican thought – distinguished by
its ‘negative’ view of freedom as non-domination or non-dependency (Pettit, 1997: 40;
Skinner, 1998) – does not deny the existence of individual rights, leading exponents have
been critical of the dominant approach to rights within modern liberal theory. Modern
liberals are accused of focusing on the demand-side of rights to the neglect of the supply-
side, generating ever longer lists of individual moral entitlements with insufficient atten-
tion to the institutional and civic preconditions necessary to secure equality and freedom
from the ever-present threat of arbitrary power. In their more polemical moments, leading
exponents of the neo-Roman school have condemned the ‘corrupt’ logic of liberal rights
theory, which is linked to a self-regarding form of individualism appropriate to today’s
fragmented and competitive commercial culture (Skinner, 1986: 243). Although some
republicans emphasise the commonalities between liberal and republican thought
(Dagger, 1997; Habermas, 1994), a key difference remains between the characteristically
liberal idea of rights as protections for a pre-political form of natural freedom and the
republican view of rights as the historical outcome of a political community’s efforts to
establish and maintain its freedom under the rule of law.
Despite these apparent tensions, it is striking how the most systematic republican theo-
ries of rights-based citizenship closely resemble those of mainstream liberal theory:
republican theorists arrive at a similar set of political and constitutional prescriptions to
those of liberals, albeit from different premises. The result is a set of institutional recom-
mendations familiar from contemporary liberal states that vitiates the democratic and
egalitarian potential of a republican approach to rights. For juridical republicans, such as
Philip Pettit, it is possible to identify an authoritative set of rights that warrant protection
outside the democratic process. Pettit therefore recommends a constitutional bill of rights
overseen by courts which provide a forum for individuals to check and test the decisions
of democratic majorities, conceived as the ultimate source of arbitrary power.1 For par-
liamentary republicans, such as Richard Bellamy, the contested nature of rights among
citizens entails that judicial authority over their content may itself be partisan and hence
arbitrary. This translates to a commitment to representative legislatures with sovereign
decision-making authority in line with the ‘Westminster’ model of constitutionalism.2 In
their focus on constitutional design and procedure, these accounts operate with a circum-
scribed view of politics. There is little space in either approach for the role of non-institu-
tional forms of popular struggles as a creative source of norms and as a counter-veiling
force to corrupt and dysfunctional institutions, despite the prima facie importance of
these struggles to the achievement of many of the canonical rights we value today.
To continue reading
Request your trial