The Nature of Political Theory

192 The Nature of Political Theory

rather to slavery and arbitrariness. Thus, although liberals and republicans are both
committed to a neutral rule of law concept, their understanding (for Pettit) of the
relationship between law and liberty is markedly different. Pettit admits that this is a
more communally-orientated understanding of freedom, although it is still opposed
to communitarianism.^18
In this context, Pettit is confident about the role of the ‘public thing’. Its role
is providing the legal and institutional framework for protection against ‘arbitrary
interference’, which, in turn, has a number of wide-ranging policy implications. Non-
domination or protection against arbitrary power is either embedded or facilitated by
theres publicastate. Thus, for example, Pettit describes the central thesis of his book
Republicanismas showing ‘how institutions can be designed—specifically designed
in a republican pattern—so that people’s enjoyment of non-domination is more or
less smoothly maximized’ (Pettit 1997: 92ff., see also Pettit in Vincent (ed.) 1997).
It would be true to say here that Pettit is much more overtly committed to this ideal
of resilient liberty and non-domination than Skinner (see Skinner 1998: 22; Maynor
2003, ch. 2).
Yet, it is never clear, in this republican analysis, where Kant’s or Rousseau’s self-
evident republicanism fits, unless one adopted the strategy of distinguishing complex
forms of republicanism, which the majority of contemporary theorists do not do.^19
It is also not clear where social liberal theorists, like T. H. Green, Guido de Ruggiero,
or L. T. Hobhouse, slot into the Skinner, Viroli, Pettit scheme. This question becomes
more urgent in terms of twentieth-century theorists, such as Hannah Arendt, who
clearly saw herself as republican. As Margaret Canovan noted, ‘if any label at all were
to be pinned on her [Arendt], it could only be “Republican”—not in the sense of the
American party, but in the old, eighteenth century sense of a partisan of public free-
dom, a companion of men like de Tocqueville, Jefferson and Machiavelli’ (Canovan
1974: 15). Pettit, however, remarks thatgenuinerepublicans, like himself, Skinner,
John Braithwaite, and Cass Sunstein, are very different creatures from Arendt. The
tradition behind Arendt he describes as ‘populist’, namely, one ‘that hails the demo-
cratic participation of the people as one of the highest forms of good and often
waxes lyrical, in communitarian vein, about the desirability of the close, homogen-
ous society that popular participation is often taken to presuppose’ (Pettit 1997: 8).
Republicanism, to Pettit, is not populist, like communitarianism. Republican liberty
is compatible with pluralism, whereas communitarianism is discomforted by it. Fur-
ther, although republicanism is interested in democracy, ‘it does not treat it as a
bedrock value’. Participation is only valuable insofar as it contributes to liberty as
non-domination.
Pettit thinks that the mistaken communitarian and populist ‘image’ of repub-
licanism is largely due to Arendt. The people, in this vision, become a collective
‘master’ and the state the ‘servant’. Representatives, and the like, should not though
be relied upon, conversely, direct democratic participation (through plebiscite or
an assembly) is favoured. Alternatively, for Pettit, the republican position sees the
people as ‘trustor’ and the state as ‘trustee’. The people trust the state to ensure non-
arbitrary rule. Direct democracy, in this context, may in fact be the ultimate form of