New Conventions for Old 199discourse within a republic. The uniformity, or communal agreement, on the per-
spective of non-dominatory liberty (which would be embodied and enforced through
a republican legal system) is crucial. This premise appears to bepreciselythe source of
Habermas’s disquiet. The republican community will demand an ethical and political
conformity to non-dominatory liberty. Despite the apparent allegiance of republicans
to modernity, there is still a lingering sense and admiration for the ancient republic,
which, in fact, underpins their emphasis on non-dominatory political liberty. Repub-
licans, wittingly or unwittingly, smuggle in the aspects of this ancient model into
their current preconceptions. In fact, the ethical and political adequacy of modern
states is gauged against the implicit assumptions underpinning the idealized ancient
republican model. Unsurprisingly, the real legal, political, and ethical structures of
modern states often fall far short. The older republican idea of almost airtight polities,
embodying stalwart independent rational citizens who love a particular conception of
liberty, retaining powers for limpid judgement, open policy-making, and reasonable
institutional design, seem distant and wholly out of kilter with what we actually know
of most modern states and their citizens. Although admirable on a theoretical level,
republicanism is, at the same time, fanciful.
Second, as regards liberty, republicans stand in a negative relation with any really
troublesome pluralism. There is a degree of tolerance of harmless forms of pluralism.
However, more vigorous assertions of pluralism are considered with deep suspi-
cion. In being focused on social virtue and the legal coercion of individual action,
republicanism implies a far greater conventional homogenization and a much more
constrained sense of pluralism, certainly than found in liberalism, or even in some
recent versions of communitarianism. Of course, the earlier premodern versions of
republicanism would have found all sense of pluralism or multiculturalism as utterly
repellent. Recent republicans usually try to contain pluralism (what ever that means
to them) through open public dialogue and the insistence on a deep respect for non-
dominatory liberty. However, as indicated above, the latter values—particularly the
focus on a substantive reading, respect for (and love) of liberty—do imply a much
greater degree of homogeneity than might initially be expected. Many republicans
have also been keen to promulgate these deep values through civic educational cur-
ricula. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this drift of argument, but it does
not rest very easily with republican criticism of other conventionalist doctrines, such
as communitarianism and nationalism. The underlying conventional virtues of the
older republic are really only just below the surface of the modern claimants.^28 One
suspects that this issue is closely connected to Habermas’ perturbation with modern
republicanism. In this sense, despite their best intentions, there is a moral chau-
vinism lurking within many contemporary republican arguments. A commitment
to non-dominatory liberty does not necessarily avoid intolerance. Republican non-
dominatory liberty actually demands certain kinds of behaviour from citizens, it is
also prepared to enforce it with a republican legal system. This is not a neutral struc-
ture of liberty, law, or human action. Republicanism is potentially an intrusive idea.
In this sense, it has close parallels with other conventionalist doctrines such as liberal
nationalism, liberal communitarianism, and liberal patriotism.