Republicanism in the Modern World.

By John W. Maynor. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2003. 240p. $62.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Citizenship and Identity: Towards a New Republic.

By John Schwarzmantel. New York: Routledge, 2003. 186p. $80.00.

The hegemony of liberalism in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is evident by the number and quality of its theorists, and by the extent to which advocates of alternatives feel compelled to develop and finely differentiate their theories in opposition to liberalism. This tendency is strongly apparent in the books on republicanism by John W. Maynor and John Schwarzmantel. Both authors are centrally driven by the current theoretical and political preoccupation with group identity politics, and argue that republicanism is superior to liberalism in addressing the corresponding challenges to civic solidarity and participation.

To Schwarzmantel, republican ideas of shared citizenship and the common good are the antidote to the fragmentation of liberal democracies by particular interests and identities. However, he eschews notions of the universal citizen in favor of a group-differentiated citizen with a wider political consciousness and patriotism. He considers the latter to be antithetical to some republicans (like Rousseau and the typically centralist French model of republicanism), but he advances that there are precedents (for example, the Frenchman Charles Renouvier) for the idea that plural identities can be accommodated in the participatory and cohesive republic. He ambivalently endorses nationalism as a source of civic integration, despite its historical association with exclusion and conflict, given its possibilities for extending citizenship to excluded others (such as immigrants), and provided that “supra-national” identity is also recognized in light of today's transnational groupings. In developing republican loyalties and capacities in a pluralistic context, Schwarzmantel is wholehearted about his institutional suggestions. He advocates a representative assembly of groups as a “supplement” to traditional liberal-democratic representation based on individual voters. He is also enthusiastic about federalism and decentralization as mechanisms for providing national or cultural autonomy within a wider civic framework. All this, he argues, will most effectively take place in a situation of greater economic equality in order to facilitate the loyalty of the poor to the state and to thwart the disproportionate political power stemming from economic power.

Maynor is inspired by different historical roots in his republican alternative to liberalism: the “neo-Roman” version of Machiavelli. He applies to contemporary difference politics Machiavelli's insight into the maintenance of liberty by civic virtue, commitment to the common good, and the institutionalized channeling of clashes between different social groups. Maynor adopts fellow republican Philip Petit's understanding of liberty as “nondomination” and the freedom from arbitrary interference and attendant anxiety that even the threat of domination entails. Key to securing such liberty is the need for the state to “track” the interests of citizens through participatory institutions at every policy stage, from agenda setting to mandatory reviews of policy solutions. To motivate and enable citizen participation, a certain kind of civic virtue is required that Maynor argues is incompatible with liberal neutrality on the good, as espoused by Will Kymlicka and John Rawls. Maynor goes beyond liberal tolerance and mutual respect to advocate a republican brand of civic virtue characterized by the orientation to fuse self-interest with the common good, and the capability to participate and listen to diverse others in public forums. Such civic virtue would be taught in public schools and informally learned through participation in state institutions. If pluralism and multiculturalism are the ultimate challenges to today's polity, then, he argues, republicanism is best able to respond, not only through its emphasis on nondomination and its plethora of participatory channels, but also because it does not ask citizens, like Rawlsian liberalism, to bracket their comprehensive identities when they come to the public forum.

Both Schwarzmantel and Maynor extensively build their cases through their points of agreement and disagreement with other contemporary theorists. Such an approach serves as a broad overview of the literature to the uninitiated, but familiar readers may find the balance tipped too far in this direction, and it does come at the expense of leaving their own suggestive analyses underdeveloped. Turning specifically to Schwarzmantel, Citizenship and Identity does the service of integrating contemporary European writers who are less familiar to an Anglo-American readership. However, the support he brings to republicanism from the history of ideas is so eclectic, including Marx and Proudhon (pp. 22–23, 45, 60–62, 66, 110–11, 113, 158), that it precludes his book as a source for a clear understanding of the historical lineage of republicanism. Just like liberalism, republicanism has historically had its own forms of the universal citizen. Beyond the bare concern of republicans for a strong sense of civic unity, it is unclear why Schwarzmantel's suggestions for redressing difference politics are uniquely republican. Nonetheless, his recommendations for the already familiar ideas of group-based representation and decentralization credibly arise from his analysis, whatever their theoretical label. It is here that more elaboration is needed. For example, he does not spell out the criteria for groups to be accorded representation, or for individuals to be recognized as members of such groups, nor what it means for a group assembly to be “supplementary” to existing liberal-democratic assemblies (pp. 54–55, 59–60, 125–29, 148). On the question of decentralization, the tension between the universal citizen and the group-differentiated citizen bubbles up on such questions as education and national groups, with the solutions too summarily found, in this case by quickly redressing the obstacles to “common citizenship” through a “common education” with a “particular cultural education” as “a sort of ‘optional extra’” (p. 120).

As a tract on republicanism, Maynor's book has the virtue of drawing from a clear republican lineage in Machiavelli, and he makes a strong case for Machiavelli's applicability to contemporary difference politics and the forging of republican civic virtues and participatory institutions. Between Maynor's analysis of Machiavelli and his lengthy presentations of contemporary liberal and republican thinkers (criticizing the former and endorsing or developing the latter), he does not get around to the main substance of his republican proposals until the last two chapters. By this time, it is clear that he is offering a genuine alternative to liberalism in terms of the legitimacy of group identities in public forums, and the institutional support for a high degree of participation animated by republican virtues inculcated through civic education. However, this substantive treatment comes near the end of Republicanism in the Modern World, just when the reader hopes he would be warming up, and important issues are closed with insufficient development. For example, he reiterates a claim made earlier in his critique of Rawls that the nondomination espoused by modern republicanism is able to redress the subjugation of women (pp. 110–14, 139–40). Given the capacity of contemporary liberal feminists to follow their historical sisters in appropriating gender-blind liberal theory to formulate concrete policy recommendations for the equalization of women, Maynor does not do enough to substantiate his claim that republicanism is superior to liberalism in challenging the division between private and public spheres and diminishing women's domination in the family. (See, for example, Susan Moller Okin for a feminist appropriation of Rawls in Justice, Gender, and the Family, 1989).

Maynor avoids “rock-hard policy recommendations” because republicanism is a “fluid public philosophy” that depends on citizen input and is specific to the character of the locale (p. 149). Schwarzmantel is concerned about too high a level of generalization in his republicanism, but still considers that “[a]ny theory is bound to operate at some level of generality” (pp. 54, 145). In my view, as indicated, both books would have benefited from more theoretical specificity and, furthermore, could have made more use of an Aristotelian methodology of developing and buttressing theoretical points by incorporating the institutions and practices of actual states into normative analysis. Schwarzmantel makes some use of this Aristotelian method by discussing, for instance, the Scottish Parliament and the local and cultural powers of national associations in the pre-1914 Habsburg Empire (pp. 6, 106, 108, 114–16, 121, 128). Maynor has the occasional word in this direction as illustrated by his remarks on the Norwegian legal requirement for government agencies “to notify affected individuals and groups before the full implementation of public policy” (p. 163).

Both authors refer to and reject the view that liberalism could just as easily be hyphenated with “republicanism” as with “democracy” (Maynor, pp. 23–24, 33, 63, 91–92; Schwarzmantel, pp. 9–10). Maynor goes to greater theoretical effort to demonstrate their difference with some success. Certainly, the enterprise animating both books will appeal to those who find the rational self-interest of liberalism a dubious foundation for public commitment and an activist civic culture. Nevertheless, both books still evidence the hold of liberalism on the modern Western mind. Despite Schwarzmantel's choice of Rousseau as a justification for his republican vision, this predecessor haunts his analysis more than guides it (pp. 5–6, 35, 46, 53, 55, 64, 75, 122, 126, 138–41, 146). And even where Scharzmantel approves, in Rousseau's condemnation of economic inequality as an impediment to democratic equality, he chooses a reform liberal remedy of a guaranteed income (pp. 61, 72, 147). As for Maynor, the distinction between republican “nondomination” and liberal “non-interference” is highly subtle (pp. 35–51), and the most “liberal-friendly” aspects of Machiavelli are what appeals—his ideas on pluralistic conflict, for example, and not his pagan civic religion.