FREEDOM AS NON-DOMINATION AND EQUALITY: A NEO-REPUBLICAN THEORY OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
type: CreativeWork
description: My main claim in this thesis is that, if we want the fundamental ideal of neo-republicanism, notably freedom as non-domination, to be ensured, we need excessive individual wealth to be limited. This claim stems from a twofold premise. First, freedom as non-domination is constituted by political equality. To be free from domination, people should be protected from anyone else’s arbitrary capacity to interfere with their choices, that is, they should be granted an equal status to one another by the state; nonetheless, to avoid the state’s interferences to be arbitrary themselves people should also have equal opportunities to influence the public decision-making process, that is, they should be granted political equality (Pettit, 1997; 2012; Pansardi, 2013; 2015; Gädeke, 2020; 2020a). Second, though, such a political equality is jeopardized by the presence of very rich people within a democracy: very rich people indeed enjoy disproportionate opportunities to influence politics because of their wealth (Gilens & Page, 2014; Cagé, 2020). Moreover, neo-republicans have either overlooked this problem (e.g., Pettit, 2012), or they have addressed it from a procedural perspective, i.e., by envisaging institutional measures to prevent the wealthy from playing such a significant role in politics (McCormick, 2011; 2019). By contrast, I show that the presence of economic elites within a democracy represents one of the major threats for freedom as non-domination: if people do not enjoy equal opportunities to influence the lawmaking process, they shall comply with arbitrary laws, thus they will be dominated. Furthermore, I argue that procedural solutions are not sufficient to solve this problem. When people possess large amounts of wealth more than their fellows, indeed, they can easily translate it into political power through a great variety of direct and indirect mechanisms that elude formal separations between economic and political spheres (Knight & Johnson, 1997; Christiano,…
abstract: My main claim in this thesis is that, if we want the fundamental ideal of neo-republicanism, notably freedom as non-domination, to be ensured, we need excessive individual wealth to be limited. This claim stems from a twofold premise. First, freedom as non-domination is constituted by political equality. To be free from domination, people should be protected from anyone else’s arbitrary capacity to interfere with their choices, that is, they should be granted an equal status to one another by the state; nonetheless, to avoid the state’s interferences to be arbitrary themselves people should also have equal opportunities to influence the public decision-making process, that is, they should be granted political equality (Pettit, 1997; 2012; Pansardi, 2013; 2015; Gädeke, 2020; 2020a). Second, though, such a political equality is jeopardized by the presence of very rich people within a democracy: very rich people indeed enjoy disproportionate opportunities to influence politics because of their wealth (Gilens & Page, 2014; Cagé, 2020). Moreover, neo-republicans have either overlooked this problem (e.g., Pettit, 2012), or they have addressed it from a procedural perspective, i.e., by envisaging institutional measures to prevent the wealthy from playing such a significant role in politics (McCormick, 2011; 2019). By contrast, I show that the presence of economic elites within a democracy represents one of the major threats for freedom as non-domination: if people do not enjoy equal opportunities to influence the lawmaking process, they shall comply with arbitrary laws, thus they will be dominated. Furthermore, I argue that procedural solutions are not sufficient to solve this problem. When people possess large amounts of wealth more than their fellows, indeed, they can easily translate it into political power through a great variety of direct and indirect mechanisms that elude formal separations between economic and political spheres (Knight & Johnson, 1997; Christiano,…
author: ICARDI, ELENA
language: eng
keywords: neo-republicanism, freedom as non-domination, limitarianism, distributive justice, political equality, Settore SPS/01 - Filosofia Politica
date published: 2023-05-18
date modified: 2026-07-27T20:19:10Z
provider: Università degli Studi di Milano
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Università degli Studi di Milano

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/968041

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.13130/icardi-elena_phd2023-05-18