Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Equality, Liberty, and Popular Power

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Contemporary democracies confront a range of well-known challenges: mounting political and economic inequality, the decline of effective leadership, the consolidation of oligarchic power, and the usurpation of sovereignty by unelected officials. How might the history of political thought help us respond to these challenges? This is an especially urgent question for scholars of Renaissance and early modern political thought, from which we inherit much of our language of equality, liberty, and popular sovereignty.

Our panel brings together a wide range of political theorists, specializing in both early modern and contemporary democratic theory, to offer novel perspectives on these problems. We utilize various analytical, interpretive, and historical methods to rethink the meaning of foundational democratic concepts. In what sense are democratic citizens “equals”? How do the actions of power-seeking elites threaten to undermine equality – and how might that threat be mitigated? How can we design democratic institutions that prevent elites from dominating the common people? More broadly, what do we mean when we speak of “democratizing” institutions? If “democratization” is an unmitigated good, should we seek to establish political systems in which the people, like an absolute monarch, holds unlimited sovereign power?

While these questions are of obvious significance today, they are by no means new. We identify theoretical resources for grappling with contemporary democratic crises in a wide range of late medieval and early modern texts. Among these, we draw on the writings of late medieval conciliarists; the historical reflections of Niccolò Machiavelli; and the political thought of Jean Bodin, the chief architect of the modern doctrine of sovereignty.

Samuel Bagg and Teresa Bejans’s co-authored paper, “Negative Egalitarianism: History and Theory,” excavates the overlooked concept of "negative egalitarianism." Bagg and Bejan examine a variety of late medieval and early modern sources, ranging from 14th-century conciliarism to early modern theories of popular resistance, to rethink the meaning of political equality. While traditional egalitarians advocate political equality on the basis of positive human characteristics – such as reason or agency – negative egalitarianism takes the opposite approach, defending political equality on the grounds that no citizen is more deserving of rule than any other.

Yves Winter explores the democratic functions of Florentine penal institutions in “Liberty and Punish: Machiavelli’s Anti-Oligarchic History of Florentine Penal Practices.” Through a close reading of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, Winter develops a novel interpretation of Machiavelli’s theory of punishment. He argues that for Machiavelli, well-structured penal institutions play a crucial role in establishing and maintaining popular republics, preventing elite capture, and protecting the liberty of the common people against the ambitions of powerful elites.

John P. McCormick similarly draws on Machiavelli as a resource for democratic theorists, focusing on the themes of popular leadership and democratic backsliding. In “Tyrannical Incompetence in Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories: Bad Men Not Knowing How to Appear Good,” McCormick examples how the actions of ineffective leaders undermine popular republics. McCormick identifies two categories of leaders who undermine popular republics: 1) well-intentioned leaders who govern based on misguided notions of goodness and patriotism, and 2) self-interested elites who advance partisan interests at the expense of shared geopolitical goals.

Eero Arum’s paper, “Absolute Democracy: Rethinking Bodin on Popular Sovereignty,” turns to Bodin’s political thought as a resource for envisioning a non-constitutionalist model of democracy. In contrast to recent constitutionalist interpretations of Bodin, Arum argues that Bodin offers a model of "absolute democracy": a state in which the popular will is unbound by law or juridical constraints. For Bodin, any “democracy” in which legislative power is permanently vested in magistrates – such as elected representatives and judges – is not a democracy at all, but rather a tyranny “by usurpation” (per usurpationem). Arum suggests that the high absolutist theory of the 16th and 17th centuries offers a valuable resource for envisioning the possibilities – and potential dangers – of democracy without constitutionalism.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Individual Presentations

• Negative Egalitarianism: History and Theory - Samuel Ely Bagg, University of South Carolina; Teresa M. Bejan, University of Oxford

• Liberty and Punish: Machiavelli on Anti-oligarchic Penal Practices - Yves Winter, McGill University

• Tyrannical Incompetence in Machiavelli’s "Florentine Histories" - John P. McCormick, University of Chicago

• Absolute Democracy: Rethinking Bodin on Popular Sovereignty - Eero Arum, UC Berkeley

Chair

• Alison McQueen Stanford University

Discussants

• Katherine M. Robiadek Xavier University

• Natasha Piano UCLA