The Open University
Yorkshire Region

Cultural Studies Research Forum
Reports and Abstracts 1995 -2000

introduction | contents

Classical republicanism and modern politics: in search of the Third Way

Ian Chowcat

There's been much talk recently about a new approach to politics, a Third Way, combining active citizenship and strengthened community with a rejection of both the collectivism of the old-style left and the market individualism of the right. This approach holds that good individual lives require we recognise society as a web of reciprocal rights and responsibilities. The question arises of whether this approach is a genuinely new one, or a revision for changed conditions of the tradition of European social democracy.

One answer some give is that the Third Way is a rediscovery of something much older, the tradition of civic republicanism originating in ancient Rome, revived in the Renaissance but lost to sight as the liberal ideal of the free and sovereign individual came to the fore. In this tradition our freedom as individuals depends upon our living in a securely free self-governing state, and we are all required to play our part in public life. In liberalism, on the other hand, individual freedom and politics are supposed to be opposites. But are republicanism and liberalism really so far apart? Even Hobbes, who first articulated many of the premises of modern liberalism, thought that we needed the state in order for individuals to flourish, just the sort of connection republicans propose. The Third Way thus looks like a continuation of the social democratic reminder of our mutual obligations, a counter-balance against an excessive stress on individualism, rather than something genuinely new.