ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the tension between democratic political equality and wealth inequality from the republican perspective. Contemporary theorists are increasingly focused on how socioeconomic inequality threatens freedom as non-domination. When socioeconomic elites influence and direct laws in their favour, they undermine the ideal of equal access and influence, subjecting others to the exercise of arbitrary power. The predominant character of the republican response to this problem in the last few decades is largely constitutional and institutional in nature. Such an approach inherits modern republicanism's reliance on constitutional and institutional design to do the work of securing freedom amid inequality. This approach is traced to Harrington's work, culminates with the Federalists, and informs McCormick's and Pettit's contributions. That perspective, however, neglects key features of the classical republican concern that the functioning of institutions is dependent on systems of norms. Attention to developing a supportive civic culture of political equality among citizens must be integral to the contemporary programme for republican freedom – as laws and institutions alone, even if aimed at political equality, will neither be stable nor sufficient. The chapter ends by briefly engaging with how Tocqueville's ideal of the free citizen coupled with ‘localism’ could suggest practices for developing norms of equal access and influence.
