Building a Citizen Society - The Emerging Politics of Republican Democracy (Paperback)

In this new collection, the idea of Republican democracy is put forward as a way of moving progressive politics beyond its present impasse. The core aim of Republicanism is understood as the sustenance of a strong and participative civil society in tandem with an active and democratic state, seeking the dispersal of property and an increase in the accountability of decision-makers - in short, a state that neither swallows up society, nor yields to the embrace of market. The challenge for Republicans is to put both the state and the market in their place so as to build what we may call a citizen society. This could be seen as a mere variation on the theme of social democracy, but it is one that is robust in its aim of advancing the revolutionary values of liberty, equality and fraternity, and in its emphasis on widening ownership and increasing participation.