A Ciceronian Defense of Democratic Participation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7984.2021.e78929Abstract
Opposing the usual elitist presentation of Cicero, I identify three arguments favoring democratic participation in De re publica and De legibus. The first sees democratic participation as a demand of the common people, which results from their untamable desire for freedom and must be fulfilled to avoid civil unrest. The second sees it as an instrument to lessen the likelihood of elites’ corruption. The third incorporates the previous two under an account of state legitimacy, arguing that democratic participation is just because without it, the civic community under a state’s rule cannot be a partnership and hence the state cannot be a legitimate one as a common property of the people. I argue that this account of state legitimacy differs from the one in Pettit’s republicanism and may help clarify the normative commitment to the public nature of the state that underlies the current “realist” and “instrumental” defenses of democracy.
References
ACHEN, Christopher H., and Larry M. Bartels. Democracy for Realists. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016.
ARENA, Valentina. Libertas and Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
ASMIS, Elizabeth. “A New Kind of Model: Cicero’s Roman Constitution in De Republica.” American Journal of Philology 126, no. 3 (2005): 377–416.
ASMIS, Elizabeth. “The State as a Partnership: Cicero’s Definition of Res Publica in His Work On the State.” History of Political Thought XXV, no. 4 (2004): 569–99.
ATKINS, Jed W. Cicero on Politics and the Limits of Reason: The Republic and Laws. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
ATKINS, Jed W. Roman Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
BAGG, Samuel. “The Power of the Multitude: Answering Epistemic Challenges to Democracy.” American Political Science Review 112, no. 4 (November 2018): 891–904.
BALOT, Ryan. “The ‘Mixed Regime’ in Aristotle’s Politics.” In Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide, edited by Thanassis Samaras and Thornton Lockwood, 103–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
BELL, D. A. The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
BRENNAN, Jason. Against Democracy. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016.
CICERO, Marcus T. Cicero: De Re Publica, De Legibus. Translated by Clinton Walker Keyes. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1928.
CICERO, M. T. On the Ideal Orator. Tradução de J. M. May; J. Wisse. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
CICERO, Marcus T. On the Republic and On the Laws. Translated by David Fott. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2014.
FREDE, Dorothea. “Constitution and Citizenship: Peripatetic Influence on Cicero’s Political Conceptions in the De Re Publica.” In Cicero’s Knowledge of The Peripatos, edited by William W. Fortenbaugh and Peter Steinmetz, 77–100. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1989.
HAMMER, Dean. Roman Political Thought: From Cicero to Augustine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
LINDBERG, S. I.; COPPEDGE, M.; GERRING, J.; TEORELL, J. V-Dem: A New Way to Measure Democracy. Journal of Democracy, v. 25, n. 3, p. 159-169, out. 2014.
PETTIT, Philip. On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
PETTIT, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
SAMARAS, Thanassis. “Aristotle and the Question of Citizenship.” In Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide, edited by Thanassis Samaras and Thornton Lockwood, 123–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
SCHOFIELD, M. Cicero’s Definition of Res Publica. In: Powell, J. G. F. (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. p. 63–83.
SCHÜTRUMPF, Eckart. “Little to Do with Justice: Aristotle on Distributing Political Power.” In Aristotle’s Politics: A Critical Guide, edited by Thanassis Samaras and Thornton Lockwood, 163–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
TATUM, W. J. Roman Democracy? In: BALOT, R.K. (org.) A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009. p. 246-259.
TUCK, Richard. Philosophy and Government 1572–1651. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
URBINATI, N. Competing for Liberty: The Republican Critique of Democracy. American Political Science Review, v. 106, n. 3, p. 607-21, out. 2012.
WOOD, Neal. Cicero’s Social and Political Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The articles and other work published in Política & Sociedade, a journal associated to the Graduate Program in Sociology at UFSC, are the property of the journal. A new publication of the same text, whether by the initiative of the author or third parties, must indicate that it was previously published in this journal, citing the edition and date of publication.
This work is licensed under the Creative Common License
