A politics of power

Recent Liberal Democrat proposals for faster GP appointments, better support for rural and coastal schools, and investment in walking and cycling show our commitment to improving public services. These are important ambitions.

Yet improving services does not, by itself, challenge the relationships that leave people powerless: an insecure worker dependent on an employer’s goodwill, a tenant afraid to challenge a landlord, or a citizen unable to contest decisions made about their care.

Liberal Democrats must ask not only whether services are improving, but whether people have the rights, resources and voice to shape their own lives. The question of power must be central to our approach. Republican political thought, with its understanding of freedom as non-domination, offers a rich intellectual tradition from which Liberal Democrats can draw in developing a politics of power.

Freedom from domination

Republican political thought has a long history, stretching from ancient Greek ideas of citizenship through the Roman republic and the Italian city-states to the Commonwealth tradition of seventeenth-century England and beyond. Modern debates about freedom have often been shaped by Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative liberty – the absence of interference – and positive liberty, understood as self-direction or self-mastery. Republican liberty, however, asks a different question: does someone hold arbitrary power over me?

At its core is the idea of freedom as non-domination: being free means not living under another’s arbitrary power. A kindly master might allow an enslaved person considerable freedom in practice, but could withdraw it at will. The enslaved person remained dependent on the master’s goodwill. Earlier societies reserved independent status for a privileged few; the task of modern civic republicans is to make it universal. Power can be dominating even when it is not being exercised harshly. What matters is whether those subject to it have an effective way to influence, challenge, or escape it.

The workplace and marriage both illustrate why republican freedom matters today. An employee may enjoy considerable autonomy, yet remain vulnerable if their employer can withdraw it as they please. Similarly, someone whose spouse controls the finances may be able to pursue their ambitions only for as long as access to money is permitted. In both cases, the apparent freedom of the worker and the spouse rests on another’s goodwill and, as a result, they lack liberty. Republican liberty requires secure rights and access to resources, so that challenging an employer or leaving a controlling partner does not mean risking destitution.

A republican political economy

A republican political economy would spread ownership, strengthen bargaining power, and make decisions answerable to those affected. Its purpose would be to replace dependence on another’s goodwill with secure rights, effective voice, and genuine alternatives. A republican political economy may include a universal capital grant. This could make it easier to refuse exploitative work or leave a controlling relationship, reducing dependence on employers, partners, or family wealth.

Similarly, worker representation on company boards and stronger collective bargaining would give employees a greater voice and make workplace authority more accountable. Rights to bid when businesses are sold, supported by finance for cooperatives and mutuals, could give workers greater ownership and control. These principles could also extend to public services. Cooperative and participatory models in schools and hospitals could give staff, students, and patients greater influence over decisions that affect them.

As well as offering a richer ideal of liberty, a distinctly republican political economy could bring economic benefits. In The Republic of Innovation, Andrea Lorenzo Capussela connects republican freedom with Schumpeterian creative destruction: the process by which innovation challenges established firms and ways of doing things. A society in which people have greater security and independence may also be one in which more people can experiment and take risks.

This matters when a small number of technology companies hold enormous power over markets and the people who depend on their platforms. Dominant firms can use their position to make it harder for new businesses to enter and challenge them. Tighter rules on mergers and, where necessary, breaking up monopolies could create space for competition and innovation, while reducing dependence on the unchecked power of private firms.

A test for Liberal Democrat policy

Liberal Democrat policies should be tested by whether they reduce unchecked power, strengthen independence and give citizens an effective voice and a right to challenge decisions.

Nobody should have to live as a supplicant, dependent on the goodwill of an employer, a partner or the state. Liberal Democrats should draw on the republican tradition to build a politics of power: one that gives every citizen the independence and voice to challenge domination, wherever it arises.

* Daniel Duggan is a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Gateshead