Folie Républicaine

Republican political theory has undergone a recent revival, first and most strongly among historians, subsequently in a more limited way among lawyers, philosophers, and political scientists. Surveying the many contexts in which republican principles are invoked, I find that appeals to republicanism are often redundant (there being other, probably better, ways of arguing for the same practices and outcomes) and sometimes unfortunate (setting off, among "street-level republicans," resonances with darker features of the older republican tradition that contemporary academic theorists of republicanism would prefer to forget). Even the more attractive features of the republican ideal - deliberative engagement in pursuit of the common good - can invite communitarian excesses, and even the "liberal republican" versions that strive to avoid that outcome are largely bereft of mechanisms for realizing their vision.