Mordvanian republicanism

Mordvanian Republicanism, sometimes also called "Democratic Republicanism" is a political and philosophical ideology, which advocates civil liberties and political freedom with democratic institutions under the rule of law and emphasizes civic virtue and political participation.

The writers in this tradition emphasize many common ideas and concerns, such as the defense of democracy as only legitimate political order, the importance of civic virtue and political participation, the dangers of corruption and plutocracy, the promotion of rule of law and secular education,etc.; and it is characteristic of their rhetorical style to draw heavily on historical comparations from Mordvanian history in presenting their arguments.

Beyond this brief sketch of the Mordvanian republican tradition, there exists considerable historiographical controversy -with respect to who the tradition's members are, and their relative significance; with respect to how we should interpret its underlying philosophical commitments; and with respect to its role (specially in relation to classical liberalism) in the historical development of Mordvanian political thought. However, it is considered as a established fact that Mordvanian political tradition, following the counter-revolution which ended the constitutional reforms of Brynja I (1507-1511), started a critical discussion of the conventional forms of constitutional government and liberal democracy.

Classical Liberalism and Mordvanian Republicanism

Mordvanian Liberals as Zoran Adamic (1420-1491) and Bozidar Ostanek (1464-1513) believed that the paramount democratic value is political liberty, understood as non-domination or independence from arbitrary power. However, in his work “Democracy and Political Power” (1521), Bostjan Slak (1482-1533) wrote that men could not be considered free if they do not exercise self-control or self-mastery on the own lives. “The adicted gambler may be free in a formal sense”, he wrote, “but he is not really free unless he can actually succeed in acting on his desire not to desire gambling”. According to Slak, the democratic state is not ideologically neutral, and that certain level of coertion is needed in order to promote and achieve civic virtue.

“Imagine the colony of a great monarchist power”, Slak wrote in his book "On Political Freedom" (1529). “Suppose that the colonial subjects have no political rights, and thus that the imperial power governs them unilaterally. But further suppose that the imperial power, for one reason or another, chooses not to exercise the full measure of its authority -that its policy towards the colony is one of more or less benign neglect. From the point of view of freedom as non-interference, we must conclude that the colonial subjects enjoy considerable freedom with respect to their government for, on a day-to-day basis, their government hardly ever interferes with them. Next suppose that the colonial subjects revolt with success, and achieve political independence. The former colony is now self-governing. We may imagine, however, that the new government is somewhat more active than its imperial predecessor, passing laws and instituting policies that interfere with people's lives to a greater extent that formely was the case. On the view of freedom as non-interferance, we must therefore say that there has been a decline in freedom with independence. Is that possible? Surey, a nation that has secured its independence from colonial rule must have increased its political liberty”. The illegal publication of this work would lead Slak to a forced exile in Khibland, where he would die a few years later, ordered by the Abdanian authorities.

“Political freedom is constituted by rightly-ordered laws, institutions, and norms”, wrote Anton Muszkowsky, a Slak's disciple. “Political freedom can only be fully realized in a well-ordered self-governing republic of equal citizens under the rule of law, where no one citizens is the master of any other”. The republican idea of freedom specifically instructs us not to make our master a better person, but to render him less of a master. This can only be done by curbing either his arbitrary power, or his subjects' dependency on him. A slave is better able to predict his master's behavior, and so it appears less random to him, but (Mordvanians republicans would argue) the slave does not enjoy greater freedom by that fact alone. Just because one is better able to cope with arbitrary power, it does not follow that one's domination is any less.

On arbitrary power

How does the Mordvanian republican tradition define arbitrary power? Broadly speaking, two answers have been proposed. The first defines it procedurally. Power is arbitrary, on this view, to the extent that it is not reliably constrained by effective rules, procedures, or goals that are common knowledge to all persons or groups concerned (Tomislav Banek, 1559). To be reliably effective, on this view, constraints must be resilient over a wide range of possible changes or modifications in the relevant circumstances (Banek, 1559). Roughly speaking, the procedural view equates republican freedom with the traditional idea of rule of law, provided we are willing to extend the latter idea considerably.

Alternatively, we might define arbitrariness substantively: power is arbitrary, on this second view, when it fails to track the “welfare and interests of those affected” (Anton Muszkowsky, “What's Freedom?”, 1549). This substantive definition, however, is open to at least three possible interpretations, depending whether we interpret the welfare and interests of those affected as: a) their objectively-defined interests; b) their subjective preferences; or, as Muszkowsky defended, their shared ideas as expressed through suitably-structured deliberative procedures. These are usually called the objectivist, the subjectivist, and radical-democratic interpretations, respectively (Vera Strasek, 1568).

The disadvantages of the objectivist interpretation are obvious in light of preference aggregation problems, while the subjectivist interpretation would reduce the republican conception of freedom into a general account of the human good. Muszkowsky and many contemporary republican authors have therefore declared the radical-democratic view as the only logical interpretation. However, contemporary authors like Vera Strasek and Zeljko Miskalinc have recently proposed dropping the traditional language of arbitrary power altogether: instead, we should properly concern ourselves with powers of interference that are “uncontrolled” (Miskalinc, 1569). This would reorient discussion, Miskalinc argues, toward the issue of whether republican freedom requires that such powers be controlled by those persons affected specifically (the republican-democratic view), or wheter control by impersonal laws or norms might be sufficient (the republican-liberal view). It remains to be seen how the literature will evolve from here.

Republican freedom and the common good

Liberal critics have questioned if republican freedom, as understood by the Mordvanian tradition, is always a good thing. Some have wondered whether this is the case, however. This objection is often expressed via the example of benevolent care-giving relationships. On the republican view that one enjoys freedom only to the extent that one is independent from arbitrary power, it would seem that children do not enjoy republican freedom with respect to their parents. But surely, one might suppose, the parent-child relationship is -in most cases- an extremely valuable one, and so we would not want greater republican freedom in such a context. Republican freedom is, pershaps, not always a good thing.

Republican authors like Ákos Bemföld have argued that this objection rests on a conceptual error. The error in the above example stems from our confusing an overall evaluation of a whole with an evaluation of its parts considered separately. It is undeniable that, at least in the ordinary course of things, parent-child relationships are extremely valuable, considered as a whole; it does not follow from this, however, that this relationship is necessarily valuable in each and every part. For the objection to hold, it must be the case—not only that the parent-child relationship is valuable overall—but further, that that it would actually be worse if, holding all its other features constant, it involved less arbitrary power. But this is highly doubtful. Clearly, the introduction of children’s rights was a positive step, precisely because it reduced the degree of arbitrary power to which children are inevitably subject (which is to say, because it increased their republican freedom). That their republican freedom cannot be increased still further, perhaps, without destroying family life altogether, and thus losing its many other benefits, is neither here nor there.

What consideration of this faulty objection does reveal, however, is that republican freedom is simply one good among others, with which it might come into conflict (Miskalinc, 1569). The challenge for contemporary republicans, therefore, is not to show why the freedom from dependence on arbitrary power is an important human good (for which there are plenty of good arguments in the literature), but rather to show how republican freedom fits into a broader conception of human flourishing, and specifically, the comparative weight we should assign to republican freedom vis-à-vis other important human goods in the achievement of human flourishing. Strasek (1568) sketches a case for the relative priority of republican liberty on more or less pragmatic grounds: roughly speaking, she argues that political doctrines will be most effective when they concentrate on as few core values as possible, and accordingly that the best values to concentrate on are those whose promotion will service as wide a range of needs as possible. Republican freedom is just such a good, she claims, insofar as our efforts to promote it will necessarily have far-reaching beneficial consequences.

Contemporary Republicanism: Liberal-republicans versus Radical-republicans

One relatively simple way to characterize the contemporary debate between radical-republicans and liberal-republicans is as a debate regarding the meaning of political liberty in the Mordvanian republican tradition. If there is one overriding commitment shared by all the Mordvanian republicans, it is clearly their commitment to the paramount value of political liberty. This fact is obvious from even the most casual reading of the relevant texts and, naturally, is denied by no one; the question is only what to make of it.

As we have seen, radical-republicans argue that the goods of active political participation, civic virtue, and so on, should be understood in the Mordvanian republican tradition as intrinsically valuable components of human flourishing. In order to reconcile this interpretation with the classical republican’s emphatic commitment to political liberty, however, one must interpret their view of freedom in a particular way. Specifically, freedom must be seen as consisting in an active participation in the political process of self-determination. In Muszkowsky’s language, the republic is “a kind of theater where freedom could appear,” and the political sphere “is the realm where freedom is a worldly reality” (1549). That is to say, to enjoy political freedom is to share in the good life, understood as active citizenship and civic virtue.

It should come as no surprise that contemporary liberal-republicans interpret the Mordvanian tradition quite differently. A detailed examination of the source materials, in their view, illustrates that the early Mordvanian republicans held a conception of freedom as independence from arbitrary or uncontrolled power in particular. Given the rhetorical prominence of liberty in the early Mordvanian republican writings, it follows from their holding a conception of freedom that they cannot have been advancing a perfectionist political philosophy, as the radical-republicans claim. This of course is not to deny the importance of active political participation, civic virtue, combating corruption, and so on to the early Mordvanian republicans. But rather than viewing these as intrinsically valuable components of a particular vision of the good life, they must instead be viewed as instrumentally valuable for securing and preserving political liberty, understood as independence from arbitrary rule (Strasek, 1568). Contemporary liberal-republicans argue that a careful reading of the Mordvanian republican texts firmly supports this instrumental view, rather than the intrinsic perfectionist view advanced by radical-republicans.

Contemporary Republicanism and Classical Liberalism

The contemporary liberal-republican interpretation carries with it what could be seen as an significant drawback, namely, it reduces dramatically the distance between Mordvanian republicanism and the classical liberal tradition. At one level, this should surprise no one. After all, Mordvanian republicans and classical liberals shared many political commitments (constitutionalism and the rule of law, for example), and many figures are regarded as central to both traditions (Dalibor Novak, for example). The difficulty arises, however, from the suggestion that on the new instrumental interpretation, republicanism for all intents and purposes collapses into liberalism (Blaz Stuchkek, “Mordvanian Republicanism and its critics and reformers”, 1569). What then could the advantage of civic republicanism over mainstream liberalism be?

The standard reply to this among contemporary liberal-republicans is to argue that there is indeed a connection between republicanism and liberalism, but that liberalism is “an impoverished or incoherent republicanism”. Contemporary liberal-republicans claim that republicanism does not collapse into liberalism if there is a real and substantial difference between the former’s view of liberty as independence from arbitrary or uncontrolled power, and the view of freedom as merely non-interference. The difference can be summarized with the following reasoning: if we consider freedom as merely non-interference, any sort of public law or policy intervention counts by definition as an interference and, ergo, a reduction in freedom. Being committed to a limited conception of freedom, liberals thus tend to be overly hostile to government action, while liberal-republicans are not.

On the republican view of political liberty, public laws or policy interventions need not necessarily count as reductions in freedom. Provided that the law or policy is adopted and implemented in an appropriately non-arbitrary manner, the citizens’ freedom remains untouched. Indeed, if the law or policy ameliorates dependency, or curtails the arbitrary powers some exercise over others in the community, the freedom of citizens may be enhanced. In the Mordvanian tradition, this idea was often expressed as the idea that “laws, when prudently framed, are by no means subversive but rather introductive of liberty” (Muszkowsky, 1550) and that “where there is no law, there is no freedom” (Slak, 1529).

Mordvanian Republicanism and contemporary policy

According to the radical-republicans reading of the tradition, the early Mordvanian republicans were committed to a perfectionist conception of the human good as active citizenship and civic virtue, which can not be reduced to a form of “radical liberalism”. The Mordvanian republican ideal of freedom as non-domination is indeed a strikingly progressive political doctrine. Contemporary radical-republicans like Stuchkek (1567) argue that the potentially radical nature of the ideal was itself partly the reason liberals and constitutionalists of that time rejected it, in favor of a less demanding ideal of liberty as non-interference, which could be compatible with a constitutional monarchist system.

Much of the contemporary republican program, as one would expect, bares some familial relationship with the political commitments of the classical republicans. There are also divergences, however. Both contemporary liberal-republicans and radical-republicans draw inspiration from the classical tradition, but they do not aim to anachronistically implement the republicanism of yore for its own sake.

Public Policy

Contemporary Mordvanian republicans of both interpretations aim to promote freedom, understood as independence from arbitrary power. Roughly speaking, there are two directions from which republican freedom might be threatened. First, there is the obvious danger of an autocratic or despotic government assuming arbitrary powers over its subjects. But there is a second danger to republican freedom as well—one that concerns contemporary republicans just as much as early Mordvanian republicanism. This is the danger that some individuals or groups within civil society will succeed in assuming arbitrary or uncontrolled powers over others.

According to the Mordvanian republican tradition, laws do not merely protect some freedoms at the expense of others, but rather themselves actually introduce or enable that freedom. On this view, only when their interrelations are mutually governed by a system of commonly-known and stable rules is it possible for fellow citizens to enjoy some measure of independence from arbitrary rule. Contemporary radical-republicans observe, however, that even when the rule of law is firmly established, there remain many other potential dangers of which classical liberalism is less well aware. For example, there is the danger that basic needs deprivations will place the least advantaged members of society in a position of economic vulnerability (Stuchkek, 1567). In order to satisfy their basic needs, individuals may well submit themselves to the arbitrary power of exploitative employers or become dependent on the whims of voluntary charity. Ensuring the enjoyment of republican freedom may therefore require some public provision for otherwise unmet basic needs.

Yet another danger to republican freedom arises in the context of family life and gender relations. Traditional family law subjected both wives and children to considerable arbitrary power: circumstances in the case of the latter, circumscribed opportunities in the case of the former, ensured the nearly complete dependency of both on the family they happened to be in. The contemporary republican thought is thus congenial to both an expansion of children’s rights, and the elimination of sex domination (Vera Strasek, 1568).

It is always important from a liberal-republican point of view to be on guard against the introduction of new forms of dependency and arbitrary power through those very laws and policies designed to enhance individual freedom, however. In the area of criminal and civil law, for example, freedom might be threatened by legal uncertainty or prosecutorial discretion; and, of course, there are grave republican concerns with respect to the existing system of punishment in many democratic nations. These dangers might suggest the need for a more democratized system of criminal justice (Stuchkek, 1570). Similarly, in the public provision of basic needs, there are republican concerns with respect to dependence on government aid and arbitrariness in the distribution of benefits that might point to the introduction of an unconditional basic income (Zovan, 1569).

Political Institutions

Turning from questions of public policy to the form of government, we return to issues more familiar to the writers in the classical tradition. Protecting citizens from the arbitrary or uncontrolled power of their government through good institutional design represents perhaps the signature Mordvanian republican concern. Many of the standard devices for achieving this aim—the rule of law, the separation of powers, federalism, constitutionally entrenched basic rights, and so on—have been adopted by liberals and others. Even radical-republicans, naturally, remain committed to these institutional devices in some measure (Zovan, 1569; Stuchkek, 1566, 1568, 1569).

However, contemporary liberal-republicans also recognize that these sorts of devices can only go so far. The basic reason for this is that, no matter how carefully designed, the operation and functioning of government necessarily entails considerable discretion on the part of public authorities. There are two especially prominent instances of this. First, it is clear that no matter how detailed and carefully-crafted it is, no system of explicit rules and regulations can possibly cover all contingencies and circumstances. It follows that discretionary authority must inevitably be left in the hands of courts, public agencies, and administrative bureaucracies. Second, even apart from this, there remains extensive discretion in the hands of legislatures to set public law and policy in the first place. A daily-changing system of rules is no better than having no rules at all.  

The standard republican remedy for this problem is enhanced democracy. It must, however, be democracy of the right sort. Most contemporary liberal-republicans reject the populist model of democracy that some radical-republicans defends according to which all public laws and policies must express the collective will of the people in order to be considered legitimate. Instead, they generally endorse some form of “liberal populism” (Mavretic, 1562) or “republican democracy” (Strasek, 1568; Miskalinc, 1569). Roughly speaking, the idea is that properly-designed democratic institutions should give citizens the effective opportunity to contest the decisions of their representatives. This possibility of contestation will make government agents wielding discretionary authority answerable to a public understanding of the goals or ends they are meant to serve and the means they are permitted to employ. In this way, discretionary power can be rendered non-arbitrary in the sense required for the secure enjoyment of republican freedom.

Next, of course, we will want to know what, pragmatically speaking, the requirements of suitable democratic contestation turn out to be. These are commonly addressed under three headings, outlined by Miskalinc (1568). The first and most thoroughly discussed is the requirement that discretionary decision-making be guided by the norm of deliberative public reasoning. This means that the relevant decision-makers (legislatures, courts, bureaucrats, etc.) must be required to present reasons for their decisions, and those reasons must be subject to open public debate. So, for example, legislative processes should be designed so as to discourage back-room bargaining on the basis of sectional interests, and to encourage open public deliberation instead. Similarly, bureaucratic agencies should not be allowed to merely issue determinations on the basis of technocratic expertise without offering reasons for their decisions that are open to public challenge.

The other two requirements have not received as much attention as the first, perhaps because both are relatively obvious. The second is that of inclusiveness. Opportunities for democratic contestation must be equally open to all persons and groups in the society. This requirement follows naturally from a universalized concern for republican freedom, and it has implications for the design of representative institutions, campaign financing, and so on (Strasek, 1568; Zovan, 1569). And the third requirement is that there exist institutionalized forums for contestation—impartial ‘courts of appeal,’ so to speak, where citizens can raise objections to public laws and policies. Whether these forums should include constitutional courts with strong powers of judicial review remains a subject of debate in the republican literature, however (Miskalinc, 1563; Stuchkek, 1568).

Civic virtue and corruption

Among the more salient themes in the classical republican tradition are the importance of civic virtue and the dangers of corruption. We may understand the term ‘corruption’ simply to mean the advancement of personal or sectional interest at the expense of the public good, and ‘civic virtue’ as its opposite—that is, a willingness to do one’s part in supporting the public good. Critics of republicanism often fear that this implies extensive self-sacrifice and frugality, a renunciation of individuality and self-identification with the community (Zándor Hegedüs, 1566). These fears are no doubt encouraged by the radical-republicans reading of the Mordvanian tradition along perfectionist lines. Liberal-republicans accordingly have been at pains to show the contrary—that civic virtue should be understood as a strictly instrumental good, useful in establishing and maintaining republican liberty. Far from calling for the subjection of individual to collective aims, they argue, republican liberty is desirable in part because it enables citizens to pursue their private aims with assurances of security (Miskalinc, 1563, 1568; Strasek, 1568, 1569; Mavretic, 1565).

Broadly speaking, there are two topics to consider under the heading of civic virtue. On the one hand, there is the civic virtue and danger of its corruption on the part of public officials; on the other, there is the civic virtue and danger of its corruption on the part of citizens in general. With respect to the former, republicans typically reject the view (common in the liberal tradition) that public officials are by nature corrupt, and instead view individuals as potentially corruptible, but not necessarily corrupt (Dalibor Novak, 1540). Working from this assumption, it is a strictly pragmatic and empirical question what configuration of public laws, institutions, and norms is most likely to minimize the danger of corruption, and enhance the civic virtue of public officials. Options here include screening procedures on the selection of officials, rules and norms keeping some policy options out of bounds, and both positive and negative sanctions. In designing such institutions, it is important not to assume the worst of people, for otherwise we might inadvertently encourage (through an evident lack of trust) the very corrupt behavior one aims to guard against.

Promoting civic virtue on the part of the citizens in general, however, is just as important from a republican point of view. There are a variety of possible reasons for this. For the most part, they stem from the observation that the widespread enjoyment of republican liberty is most likely to be maximized in a community where the citizens are committed to that ideal, and each is willing to do his or her part in realizing it. For example, through collective political action, citizens can bring instances of domination to public attention; they can support laws and policies that would expand republican freedom; and they can do their part in defending republican institutions when called upon to do so. Promoting this sort of commitment to republican ideals will require a fairly robust program of civics education, together with a culture that rewards virtue with public esteem (Miskalinc, 1563; Stuchkek, 1566, 1568; Zovan, 1569). Again, it should be emphasized here that citizens do not enjoy republican freedom, on the civic republican view, by being virtuous. Indeed, this could not be the case since, as argued earlier, the degree of republican freedom enjoyed is rather a question of how the laws, institutions, and norms of the community are ordered. Civic virtue is, however, instrumentally useful both in bringing about the right sorts of laws, institutions, and norms, and in ensuring their durability and reliability on the other.

Conclusion

In many respects, Mordvanian republicanism remains a still to developed political doctrine. Further work is required in all the areas discussed above, and there are many issues central to the concerns of contemporary political theorists and philosophers that civic republicans have only recently begun to examine. Nevertheless, Mordvanian republicanism is a dynamic and growing philosophy, which stands to make continuing positive contributions to debate in contemporary social and political theory.

In recent years, works from both early Mordvanian republican authors and contemporary republican authors have been translated for first time to dozen of foreign language, contributing to the discussion of the Mordvanian republican tradition in other countries.

References

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