Introduction

Civic republicanism addresses the problem of freedom among human beings who are necessarily interdependent. As a response it proposes that freedom, political and personal, may be realised through membership of a political community in which those who are mutually vulnerable and share a common fate may jointly be able to exercise some collective direction over their lives. This response, older than liberalism, has been expressed and developed by a variety of thinkers through the history of Western politics, and constitutes a more or less continuous and coherent republican tradition. In this approach, freedom is related to participation in self-government and concern for the common good. (The political theory of republicanism is only loosely related to the issue of the presence or absence of a monarchy, which is the common use of the term republicanism.)

Republican politics is concerned with enabling interdependent citizens to deliberate on, and realise, the common goods of an historically evolving political community, at least as much as promoting individual interests or protecting individual rights. Emphasising responsibility for common goods sets republicanism apart from libertarian theories centred on individual rights. Emphasising that these common goods are politically realised sets republicanism apart from neutralist liberal theories which exclude substantive questions of values and the good life from politics. Finally, emphasising the political construction of the political community distinguishes republicans from those communitarians who see politics as expressing the pre-political shared values of a community.