A Possibility of Republican Freedom

In this thesis, I defend contemporary accounts of republican freedom as nondomination from the objection that it is an impossible political ideal. The objection holds, roughly, that the state dominates us, the people, because it interferes with us without being under our control, or when the state is under our control, that is, the control of "the People," who in so doing exercises a particular form of social agency as "teams," but then this "People" dominates us. I argue that even if "the People" as a "team" does not dominate, it is organizationally infirm to resist the state and so we are dominated again. I respond by arguing that the "the People" can manifest in an alternative form of social agency, namely, as a "group agent," to control or check the state, but not dominate citizens. I call this group agent the "People's Tribunate." This entity is a well-integrated group agent supported by the vast majority of citizens and endowed with the institutional and social capacities necessary to control the state. At the same time, it would remain nondominating because citizens would retain the ability to engage in Gandhian "satyagraha," a form of resistance through withdrawal capable of preventing the People's Tribunate from engaging in arbitrary interference and, therefore, domination. By combining popular control with the continuing capacity for civic resistance, the thesis aims to show that republican freedom as non-domination is both coherent and institutionally possible.