Non-Domination and Political Liberal Citizenship Education

Abstract

According to Philip Pettit, we should endorse "republican" liberty, freedom as "non-domination," as a "supreme political value," that is, "a value with a distinctive claim to the role of yardstick for our institutions" (Pettit 1997 , 80). 1 It is this commitment to freedom as non-domination that distinguishes republicanism from various forms of liberal egalitarianism, including the political liberalism of John Rawls (Rawls 2001 , 2005). Some political liberals challenge this claim. They hold that the main elements of political liberalism can be construed as comprising a robust commitment to non-domination for all citizens. According to Anthony Laden, for instance, "there is a rather close correlation between [.. .] the distinctive features of republicanism and those of political liberalism" (Laden 2006 , 342). More strongly, Andrés De Francisco contends that appreciation of the core elements of political liberalism, and especially its ideal of free and equal citizenship, show that "Rawls is as republican as one can be" (De Francisco 2006 , 287). So is republicanism an alternative to political liberalism? Or does political liberalism (at least implicitly) include, or perhaps even rest upon, a commitment to non-domination? In order to answer these questions, we need to distinguish between a "political" conception of non-domination and a "comprehensive" conception. If we construe republican liberty as a comprehensive moral ideal, or as necessarily embedded within a particular comprehensive moral doctrine, 2 then it seems clear that republicanism is distinct from political liberalism. But if we construe non-domination as a distinctly political ideal, then political liberalism is thoroughly republican in nature. In this paper I will outline a political conception of non-domination and propose that it is an integral part of political liberalism. The latter claim will be defended via an exploration of the kind of "citizenship education" 3 that political liberalism mandates for all students. Such an education would impart to future citizens the skills and knowledge necessary for them to realize republican freedom vis-à-vis their political