Towards a Radical Republican Conception of Power

What is social power and when is it acceptable? In this dissertation I argue for a radical republican solution to this question. My solution is republican in that it understands power to be acceptable when it does not involve domination (or when it is not arbitrary). My solution is radical, however, in that it involves a much more expansive understanding of the basic nature of power than is typically found in contemporary republican political philosophy. My dissertation has two main parts. The first part develops an analytically rigorous account of social power that overcomes two shortcomings common to contemporary accounts of power. The first shortcoming is that many views of power do not adequately take into account the distinction between an agent exercising power and an agent's power manifesting itself. Such `activist' views of power deny that an agent's power can manifest itself when he does not exercise it (or when he is not actively involved in bringing about the outcome). In contrast I argue that an agent's power can manifest itself - or make a difference in the world - even when he does not exercise it. The second shortcoming is that, due to their focus on exercises of power by agents, many views of power do not pay adequate attention to the ways in which (structures of) social relations confer powers on agents, without the agents' involvement and sometimes even against their will. The second part of my dissertation works out an account of how to understand domination (or unacceptable power). I begin with the contemporary (civic) republican understanding of this notion found in the political philosophy of Philip Pettit, but I argue that this understanding of domination needs modification because it is based in a broadly activist view of the basic nature of power. My suggestion for reinterpreting the republican understanding of domination is based on the structural differences between three different ways that power can be exercised. I suggest that dominating or arbitrary power is in essence power that can be exercised over (and so not with) others without also being exercised for them.Ph.D.2016-11-30 00:00:0