Neorepublicanism and Its critics: deliberation, rhetoric and republican freedom

Abstract

This article attempts to clarify some of the recent debates concerning the conceptual and normative autonomy of a contemporary neorepublican political theory. Critics of the political-theoretical extension of the "republican revival" usually tend to challenge such autonomy, by claiming that neorepublicanism ultimately dissolves either into varieties of political liberalism, or into deliberative democracy. In addressing this latter charge, I argue that despite apparent affinities, neorepublicanism and recent accounts on deliberative democracy are not only rooted in separate political traditions, but they also construct the requirements of participation and deliberation in significantly different ways.