This is an excellent introduction to the often confusing subject of republican political theory. It is engagingly written, clearly structured, and impeccably researched. The book covers an impressive range of concepts and thinkers over a vast period, making it an indispensable resource for specialists in the field as well as an accessible guide for general readers and students.

The term “republican” is complicated and contested. Emerging in a recognizable form in ancient Greece—although, as Hammersley points out, later writers have also drawn on the biblical experiences of the Hebrews—republican theory and practice have frequently shifted as they adapt to changing socioeconomic and political circumstances, and reflect updated normative concerns and conceptual developments. Accordingly, the label “republican” has been claimed by, or applied to, a wide range of states and numerous competing theoretical paradigms. Faced with the problem of bringing sense and order to a diverse set of concepts, ideals, and arrangements, Hammersley adopts an ecumenical approach. She identifies a central aim—self-government for the common good—and a handful of core values such as liberty and virtue, and accepts that within these broad parameters there has been ample room for dispute about their precise content and the resulting institutional forms. “Rather than constituting a fixed and consensual tradition,” she argues, republicanism is best understood by way of “Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances” whereby each instantiation of republicanism shares some, but not necessarily all, of the paradigm's characteristic features (13).

There is clearly an advantage to Hammersley's approach, since it allows her to address a considerable quantity of material spread across a long period without being drawn into controversies about a particular iteration's republican credentials or being called upon to make ideological or normative judgments of her own. An acknowledged republican tradition with a recognized, if contested, canon is taken as a starting point, allowing Hammersley to set out and discuss the central issues and rival positions. The book is organized chronologically, starting in antiquity and working through the Renaissance, early modern era, and nineteenth century up to the present day and the current academic debates. Especially impressive is the depth of coverage on the issues that sparked the English Civil War and its aftermath in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the subsequent Enlightenment period that gave rise to both the American and French Revolutions, each of which receives a dedicated, and detailed, chapter of its own. Across the volume, Hammersley addresses the shifting attitudes and responses to certain recurring questions, such as the optimal size of a republic, whether a mixed or democratic form of government is preferable, the respective merits of elite versus popular rule, the compatibility of commercial society with republican virtues, and whether republicanism is the only legitimate form of government (“republican exclusivism”) or merely the best one. All of this is handled exceptionally well.

The family-resemblance approach, however, comes at a cost. Eschewing a theoretical definition of republicanism obscures the intricate way that the tradition's core ideas of liberty, virtue, and—I would add—equality are internally related to the central value of the common good. These are not ad hoc ideals which republicans happen to endorse, but principles which operate together to generate the fragile good of individual and collective self-government, and which must be held together in harmony if the republic is to remain as a viable and free state. Where one or more of these foundational elements is underemphasized, or lacking, this results in the “corruption” of civic virtue. While Hammersley mentions corruption several times, often in the context of how “power corrupts” (e.g., 12), there is no overall assessment of the theoretical role that corruption plays as the antithesis of virtue.

A second consequence of Hammersley's approach is that, though she includes a dizzying array of republican thinkers, the overall canon within which she works is fairly conventional. There is, for example, no discussion of the role played by women as a group in the tradition's history. Women were long excluded by republicans, both in practice and in theory, since the idea of women as citizens was once regarded as something of a category mistake. Today, the reverse is true with women's historic subjection usually being considered a betrayal of republicanism's core normative principles. This shift did not happen automatically, for example as the natural extension of Enlightenment values, but was hard won by historic women writing as republicans, albeit as internal critics. Though Hammersley references some women, such as Catharine Macaulay, Marie-Jeanne Phlipon Roland, and Germaine de Staël, she does not discuss their collective impact on the tradition. Deep in a footnote, Hammersley does remark that “the question of whether [Mary] Wollstonecraft should be described as a republican remains debatable, but both she and others advocated the application of republican notions of virtue and liberty to women,” citing Lena Halldenius and Sylvana Tomaselli for and against on this issue (231). In my view, this slightly misstates the situation. While it is true that nonrepublicans like Tomaselli remain skeptical, among republican scholars there is a growing consensus not only that Wollstonecraft should be considered among their historic sources but also that she contributes theoretically to important current republican debates (see several essays in Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee, The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft [Oxford University Press, 2016]). The point is not that Wollstonecraft and others simply demanded women's inclusion in the citizenry, but that in staking this claim they had to challenge the structure of patriarchy that infused society. Doing so as republicans entailed creating innovative analyses of, and solutions to, problems such as how to account for structural forms of domination, the effects of implicit bias, and the role of culture in supporting freedom that preoccupy republicans today.

One final consequence of the ecumenical stance is that it inhibits our making normative judgments about those who claim to be republicans. Highlighting throughout the book the history of republican slaveholding, Hammersley writes that some nineteenth-century Americans, such as John C. Calhoun, “presented themselves as the true heirs and guardians of classical republicanism and insisted that the abolition of slavery would be a threat” to American order (176). It is true that Calhoun was a noted political theorist as well as politician. However, whether at that stage in history the appropriation of older justifications of slavery for political purposes should be regarded as genuine republican arguments rather than as specious self-serving rhetoric is a question that we should be able to answer decisively. Notwithstanding their complicit history, republicans from ancient times have recognized the theoretical tension between republicanism and slaveholding, with the latter being seen as necessarily corrupting of the virtue necessary for a free and stable society. If we simply accept all positions self-professed republicans adopt as legitimate, we lose sight of the integrity of the republican model. Lastly, as with historic women, African Americans writing as a group within the republican tradition, including Frederick Douglass, James McCune Smith, Harriet Jacobs, and others, have contributed theoretically in ways that republican scholars today would do well to recognize.

These observations aside, Hammersley's is a wonderful book and the best, most thoroughly researched short introduction that I know of. I am immensely glad to have read it.