1

Forthcoming, in Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer (eds.): Social Equality: Essays

on What It Means to be Equals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Relational Equality, Non-Domination, and Vulnerability

Marie Garrau & Cécile Laborde

In this chapter, we attempt to do three things. In the first section, we suggest that

republicanism is a paradigmatic relational theory of equality. Much in the spirit of Elizabeth

Anderson and Samuel Scheffler’s relational approaches, the republican ideal points not

merely or exclusively to a distributively just state, but aims at creating a society where

citizens enjoy equal standing. In the second section, we focus on Philip Pettit’s

republicanism and account for his commitment to relational equality. We argue that Pettit’s

concern with domination relies upon a distinctive anthropology of social interdependence and

mutual vulnerability. However, in the third section, we show that the republican conception

of vulnerability is too narrow to accommodate important threats to relational equality.

Drawing on the work of French sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Serge Paugam and

Robert Castel, we argue that not all social vulnerabilities are reducible, or even connected, to

domination. If that is the case, the pursuit of the republican ideal of relational equality cannot

be reduced to the pursuit of non-domination, at least as Pettit understands it.

I. Republicanism: a Relational Theory of Equality.

There are two distinct approaches to egalitarianism in contemporary political philosophy:

2

distributive and relational. Distributive approaches remain dominant in normative analytical

liberal writings, and are endorsed by prominent philosophers such as Richard Arneson,

Ronald Dworkin, as well as many followers of John Rawls.1 Relational approaches –

sometimes also called theories of ‘social equality’ or ‘status equality’ - have been put forward

as alternatives to distributive approaches by writers such as Elizabeth Anderson, Samuel

Scheffler, Jonathan Wolff and Christian Schemmel.2 This section clarifies the core

commitments of relational equality and suggests that republicanism – particularly the

republicanism of non-domination associated with Philip Pettit3 – seems to be a promising

relational theory of equality.

Let us first clarify the basic contrast between distributive and relational theories of

equality. The axiomatic starting point of all distributive theories is that equality is a basic

moral value which requires that certain goods be fairly distributed by the state among

individuals. Theorists then proceed to discuss three distinct issues. The first concerns the

currency of equality: should individuals be equalized in respect to their resources, or their

1Richard Arneson, “Liberalism, Distributive Subjectivism, and Equal Opportunity for Welfare”, Philosophy and Public

Affairs 19, no. 2 (1990): 158-194; Richard Arneson, “Rawls, Responsibility, and Distributive Justice” in Maurice

Salles and John A. Weymark (eds) Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism: Themes from Harsanyi, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2008); Ronald Dworkin, “What Is Equality? II. Equality of Resources”, Philosophy and

Public Affairs, 10 (1981): 283-345; G. A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice”, Ethics 99, no. 4 (1989):

906–944.

2 Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?”, Ethics 109, no. 2 (January 1999): 287–337; Samuel Scheffler,

“What Is Egalitarianism?” Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, no. 1 (2003): 5–39; Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect, and

the Egalitarian Ethos”, Philosophy &Public Affairs 27, no. 2 (1998): 97–122; Christian Schemmel, “Distributive and

Relational Equality”, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 11, no. 2 (September 2011): 123–148; Iris Marion Young, Justice

and the Politics of Difference, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

3 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism. A Theory of Freedom and Government, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997); Pettit, Ph.,

On the People’s Terms. A Republican Theory and Model for Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

3

welfare, or some other metric? The second concerns the principle of distribution: does

equality require priority to the worst-off, or some alternative principle such as

sufficientarianism? The third issue is what counts as a disadvantage for purposes of

egalitarian compensation: physical handicap, medical needs, limited talents, unfavorable

social positions, unsuccessful gambles, expensive tastes, demanding religious commitments?

The latter issue has provided a fertile terrain of discussion for the dominant school of

distributivism, luck egalitarianism. According to luck egalitarians, justice demands that

society compensate disadvantages deriving from brute luck, but does not require that it

corrects disadvantages that are due to option luck. Market-based and other inequalities are

legitimate when they flow from personal choice; but they must be corrected by the

redistributive state when they do not.4

Theorists of relational equality have retorted that luck egalitarianism offers a

misguided, or at least truncated, view of equality. As Elizabeth Anderson has argued, the

principle of compensation adopted by proponents of luck egalitarianism can lead the state to

abandon victims of bad option luck to their fate and fail to protect them from exploitation5. It

can also lead the state to consider citizens who are victims of brute luck as objects of pity,

thereby violating the principle according to which every citizen should be treated with

respect6. For Anderson, these flaws come from a narrow interpretation of equality conceived

as equality of divisible and privately appropriated goods. But they can be remedied if we

redefine equality in relational terms, as an equality of standing or an equality of status.

Equality, for her, is not primarily about the goods that individuals are entitled to. It is, rather,

about how individuals relate to one another. This conception captures the vision motivating

4 The paradigmatic exposition of the luck egalitarian position is Arneson.

5 Anderson, E., “What is the Point of Equality?”: 295-301.

6 Anderson, E., “What is the Point of Equality?”: 302-307.

4

egalitarian social movements, who have defended the rights of workers, the disabled, women

or racial minorities to live in a society of equals, where difference, whether natural or social,

does not become a marker of social oppression or subordination. As Anderson famously put

it, egalitarianism’s “proper positive aim is not to ensure that everyone gets what they morally

deserve, but to create a community in which people stand in relations of equality to others”.7

Stated schematically, the vision of relational equality is simple and intuitively

attractive. Yet the precise contours of its ‘proper positive aim’ are not often clear. So it might

be useful to identify four key components central to relational approaches. As we shall see,

there is one theory of politics – republicanism – that wholeheartedly endorses these four

concerns, and therefore prima facie qualifies as a paradigmatically relational theory of

equality.

Relational approaches can be said to depart from luck egalitarianism and, more

generally from distributive approaches of equality8, in four main ways: they insist on the

importance of equal access to non-material goods; they underline the expressive nature of

political institutions; they argue that the achievement of equality requires a democratic ethos;

and, finally, they draw attention to the structure of social relationships.

1. Equal access to non-material goods

7 Anderson, E., “What is the Point of Equality?”: 288-289.

8 As noted earlier, luck egalitarianism is the dominant paradigm among contemporary distributive theories of justice,

but not all distributive theories endorse luck egalitarianism. Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness, which can be

considered a source both by proponents of luck egalitarianism and by theorists of relational equality (Scheffler,

2003), is a good example of this. However, while Rawls’ theory is irreducible to luck egalitarianism, it remains

focused on the question of the fair distribution of social goods. In this respect, and as we shall see, it falls under

some of the critiques addressed by theorists of relational equality to standard conceptions of equality.

5

First, relational approaches of equality postulate that equality does not merely require the

distribution of material goods such as income, resources and opportunities. Instead, people

are entitled to equal access to what Rawls calls ‘the social bases of self-respect’ – the social

infrastructure which gives people confidence in the value of their lives and pursuits. Rawls

went as far as saying that the social bases of self-respect are the ‘most important’ primary

good in his theory of justice.9 This insight directly tallies with the concerns of recognition

theorists such as Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth.10

Yet it has remained radically under-

developed in Rawlsian political philosophy – not surprisingly perhaps, given that it is unclear

how non-material goods such as recognition or the bases of self-respect can be subjected to

the principles of fair distribution that are at the heart of Theory of Justice11

or can be

distributed at all, as Iris Young argued in her critique of the distributive paradigm12

.

2. Expressive nature of political institutions

Second, relational approaches shift the focus away from what people need to lead a good life

(resources, opportunities or primary goods) to what institutions need to do in order to treat

people with equal respect. In line with so-called ‘expressive’ theories of law and the state and

in contrast to distributive theories, it is concerned, not only with what people should get, but

9 Rawls, J, A Theory of Justice, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, revised edition): 386.

10 Fraser, N. “From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Postsocialist Age””, New Left Review,

212 (1995); Fraser, N. and Honneth, A., Redistribution or Recognition ? A Political-Philosophical Exchange, (London, New

York, Verso, 2003); Honneth, A. The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (trans. by J.

Anderson, Oxford, Polity Press, 1995).

11 Lazzeri, Ch., « Le problème de la reconnaissance dans le libéralisme déontologique de Rawls », Revue du Mauss, 23,

(2004): 165-179

12 Young, Iris M., Justice and the Politics of Difference, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990).

6

how they should get it if they live in a society of equals.13

One common critique leveled at

luck egalitarians by advocates of relational equality is that it pursues outcome-based

distributive fairness at the expense of process-based expressive respect. Welfare recipients,

for example, may be forced into ‘shameful revelations’ of their personal circumstances, if

they are successfully to claim compensation for their undeserved misfortune from the state.

Yet to be treated as an equal is precisely to be able to make claims on one another by virtue

simply of one’s status as a citizen, without any need for a moralized account of the details of

one’s particular circumstances.14

Another example of a distributively equal, yet relationally

unequal institution is that of a state which materially protects the equal religious freedoms of

all citizens, yet symbolically associates itself with one religion. Symbolic religious

establishment, on that view, may not be a distributive wrong but it can be an expressive

wrong, insofar as it undermines the equal status of citizens.15

3. Egalitarian social ethos

The third component of relational approaches shifts the focus away from institutions back to

individuals. In a society of equals, it is not sufficient that institutions show appropriate

expressive respect for citizens. It is also necessary that citizens themselves display the right

kind of attitudes towards one another. Theorists of relational equality, therefore, reject the

view, associated with Rawls, that only institutions, but not individuals, should be motivated

by the demands of liberal justice. Arguing against the limited scope of Rawls’s ‘duty of

civility’, G.A. Cohen famously argued that the realization of Rawls’s difference principle

13 Schemmel “Distributive and Relational Equality” (2011).

14 Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” (1999), Scheffler, “What Is Egalitarianism?” (2003); Jonathan Wolff,

“Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27(2): 1998, 97-122.

15 Laborde, C., “Political Liberalism and religion, On Separation and Establishment”, Journal of Political Philosophy,

Vol. 21, n° 1 (2013): 67-86.

7

requires that people share a more comprehensive ‘egalitarian ethos’ – that they are not merely

motivated by their self-interest but, rather, by a feeling of community, care and mutuality.16

4. Structure of social relations

The fourth and last component of relational approaches is the most far-reaching and breaks

with the long-standing liberal reluctance to transform and reshape civil society in line with

valued political and social ideals. Historically, liberalism has been a profoundly

‘transformative’ theory and practice of politics. By contrast, contemporary liberal philosophy

combines a strong ideal-theory-based redistributive focus with a relative indifference to the

shape and structure of actual social relations. This is compounded by a commitment, central

to Rawls’s ‘political’ liberalism, not to enforce comprehensive liberal notions of individual

autonomy or equality onto a society characterized by an irreducible ‘fact of pluralism’.17

As

theorists of relational equality as well as other critics have pointed out, however, it is difficult

to see how individuals can display justice-conducive attitudes if they live in a society that is

marked by large and unchecked socio-economic inequalities, the pervasiveness of a

competitive and profit-driven ethics, the persistence of structural forms of oppression, and

dominating social relations within familial, religious and other private associations. Theorists

of relational equality argue that citizens will only cultivate an egalitarian ethos if they live in

a civil society – market, associations, families – itself structured around egalitarian

institutions and norms.

Not all theorists of relational equality have endorsed those four claims. The first two

claims are the most popular in the existing literature on relational equality (Scheffler,

Anderson, Wolff, Schemmel)– not surprisingly perhaps, as they do not radically break with

16 Cohen, G. A., Incentives, Inequality, and Community. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. G. Peterson (ed.). Vol. 13,

(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992).

17 Rawls, J., Political Liberalism, expanded edition, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005): xvi-xxix.

8

the Ralwsian commitment to combine a just, redistributive welfare state with a civil society

where individuals and associations are free to pursue their good in their own way. Liberals

are understandably suspicious of what they take to be illiberal comprehensive political

theories – communitarian and socialist, notably. However, there is an alternative political

tradition, which takes on board[CL1] basic liberal commitments to individualism and pluralism,

yet also places the four components of relational equality at its heart. Republicanism has a

long pedigree of association with progressive, reformist and social-democratic political

movements in France and other countries. Philosophically, it has recently received

paradigmatic articulation in Pettit’s seminal republicanism of non-domination.18

Citizens

enjoy non-domination when they are not dependent on a social relationship in which other

agents wield arbitrary power over them. This idea has received extensive elaboration

elsewhere.19

Here we show that republican non-domination is, prima facie, a promising

theory of relational equality.

Consider first how republican non-domination swiftly accommodates the four

components of relational equality highlighted above. Let us take them in reverse order. First,

republicans worry about both vertical and horizontal domination: domination in the ‘private’

sphere –imperium – is as acute a source of political concern as domination by the state –

dominium. As republicans have long argued, individuals who live at the mercy of others –

slaves, women – cannot be citizens. This means that citizenship is not purely a formal notion

applying to the state and its laws. It is, more comprehensively, a social notion with wide-

18 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997); Pettit, Ph., On the People’s Terms. A Republican Theory and Model for Democracy,

(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012).

19 Maynor, J., Republicanism in the Modern World, (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2003); Laborde C, Maynor J. (eds.),

Republicanism and Political Theory, (Oxford, Blackwell, 2008); Lovett, F. A General Theory of Domination and Justice,

(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010).

9

ranging implications upon the shape and form of civil society. Second, a dominant theme in

republican writings has been that of virtue. Virtue points to those attitudes and disposition

that citizens need to display towards the state and toward one another. While historically

those virtues were narrowly martial, masculinist and hierarchical, in egalitarian societies they

become virtues associated with the ethos of democracy – equal respect, solidarity, and care.

Republicans have been open about the need for republics to build a ‘citizen society’.20

Third,

republicans expect citizens to identify with their institutions, so as not to let politics become

the preserve of a narrow elite. Institutions matter morally not only for what they do, but also

for how they do it. Republicanism, therefore, is a spontaneously expressive theory of law and

institutions.21

Fourth, republicans have long defined the currency of equality in non-

exclusively material terms, as equality of status – thus incorporating many of the concerns of

recognition theorists. This does not mean that republicans have been indifferent to the

redistribution of material goods – the growth of the welfare state in France, for example, was

grounded in solidariste ideals derived from republican ideals of equality, mutuality and

reciprocity.22

But – as is the case with most relational theories – republicans justify material

redistribution by appeal to a broader moral vision, that of the society of equals,23

and[CL2]

material redistribution is necessary but never sufficient to achieve a society of equals. This

20 White, S., Leighton, D., (eds), Building a Citizen Society. The Emerging Politics of Republican Democracy, (London,

Lawrence and Wishard, 2008); Dagger, R. Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship and Republican Liberalism, (Oxford, Oxford

University Press, 1997); Maynor, J., Republicanism in the Modern World, Cambridge, Polity, 2003). Costa, V. “Neo-

republicanism, freedom as non-domination, and citizen virtue”, (Politics, Philosophy, Economics, 8, 2009): 401-419.

21 Pettit, Ph., On the People’s Terms (2012): 77-92; Laborde, C., “Political liberalism and religion”, (2013).

22 Spitz, J-F, Le Moment républicain en France, (Paris, Gallimard, 2005); Hayward Hazareesingh, S., Intellectual Founders of

the Republic. Five Studies in Nineteenth-Century French Republican Political Thought, (Oxford, Oxford University Press,

2001).

23 Dagger, D., “Neo-Republicanism and the Civic Economy”, Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, 5, n° 2, (2006): 151-

173; Rosanvallon, P., La société des égaux, (Paris, Seuil, 2011).

10

leads us to the second, more general sense in which republicanism is a promising relational

theory of equality. The republican concern for the quality of social relationships comes from

a rejection of the peculiar form of atomism which is characteristic of luck egalitarianism.

Republicanism, by contrast, is grounded in a holistic individualism, which takes social

interdependence and mutual vulnerability as basic anthropological and political starting

points. As we shall see in the next section, this political anthropology grounds the republican

commitment to relational equality and accounts for its specific interpretation in terms of

freedom as non-domination.

II. Republican Non-Domination:

Mutual Interdependence and Vulnerability

The concept of vulnerability plays a central role in several moral and political theories which

have criticized the tendency of contemporary theories of justice to focus on distribution at the

expense of a reflection on the kind of relationships that should be furthered between citizens

in a democratic society.24

However, it is in Pettit’s republicanism that we find the chief

elements of a fully developed political theory of vulnerability. While arguing that human

beings are fundamentally vulnerable in so far as they depend on one another, Pettit also pays

special attention to the social and political processes that can increase vulnerability and

24 See especially, Tronto, J., Moral Boundaries. A Political Argument for a Ethics of Care, (New York, Routledge, 1993);

Tronto, J., Caring Democracy. Markets, Equality and Justice, New York University Press, 2013; Honneth, A., The Struggle

for Recognition (1995); Honneth, A. and Anderson, J., “Autonomy, Vulnerability, Recognition and Justice”, in

Anderson, J. and Christman, J. (ed.), Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays, (Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2005).

11

deprive agents of their autonomy and equal status. He is, as a result, able to embed

vulnerability into a broader normative theory of non-domination – the republican version of

relational equality.

1. A general definition of vulnerability

Let us start with a general definition of vulnerability. Vulnerability results from a situation in

which an agent is both dependent on and exposed to another agent. To be vulnerable is to be

exposed to the power of someone we depend on – physically, affectively, socially or

economically. In this respect, vulnerability supposes the existence of a relationship of

dependency between agents who have the power to act on one another, and potentially, to

harm one another.25

For instance, children are vulnerable to their parents in so far as they

depend on their parents for the physical and affective care they receive; yet they can also be

harmed by their parents. In the same way, citizens are vulnerable to the state: in so far as they

depend on the state for the rights they enjoy, they can be harmed when the state deprives

them of their rights or violates these rights.

However, vulnerability does not necessarily suppose the existence of a structural

asymmetry, or of an imbalance of power, between interdependent agents. For instance, co-

workers or lovers are vulnerable to one another in so far as each member of the relation has

the power to affect the other, merely because of the relationships they both depend on.

Vulnerability then only supposes the existence of a dependency relationship between agents

who can act on one another and, potentially, harm one another. If vulnerability increases

when the relationship becomes asymmetrical, or when one agent has more power than the

25 On this definition, see Goodin, R., Protecting the Vulnerable. A Reanalysis of our Social Responsibilities, (Chicago, The

University of Chicago Press, 1985): 111-112.

12

other, it does not disappear when the relationship is symmetrical, or the power equal. Rather,

in these cases, we can say that vulnerability is mutual or equally distributed between agents.

2. Pettit’s twofold perspective on vulnerability

The notion of vulnerability plays a pivotal role in Pettit’s theory. Yet while the concept often

appears in his texts, it is rarely the object of a proper definition; and its meanings vary. It may

be helpful to distinguish two different uses of the concept, which refer to two different levels

of vulnerability, which we propose to call ‘fundamental’ and ‘problematic’, respectively.

First, Pettit suggests that human beings, insofar[CL3] as they are relational or social

beings, are fundamentally vulnerable to each other. Here, vulnerability works as an

anthropological category, a common and irreducible fact of human life, which proceeds from

our mutual interdependence. It is because human beings are forced to live together and

cannot develop their human abilities outside social life that they are exposed to one another.

In Republicanism, Pettit does not refer often to this form of vulnerability. He mostly uses the

term vulnerability in relation to “vulnerability classes”26

, which are groups of people that

share a feature which makes them vulnerable to domination. But when he underlines the

importance of personal trust in the republican society27

he makes clear that the achievement

of freedom as non-domination does not mean that citizens will be invulnerable to each

other’s actions. Because they will remain mutually dependent upon one another, they will

remain exposed to each other’s actions.28

[CL4] Vulnerability being a structural aspect of

human existence, it cannot be totally eliminated and will remain as a feature of interpersonal

relationships[CL5]. In this respect, a state of non-domination is not designed to eliminate all

forms of vulnerability, but only those forms of vulnerability that threaten citizens’ capacity to

26 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997): 122.

27 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997): 265.

28 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997): 265.

13

participate equally in social and political cooperation, that is those that derive from exposure

to domination, whether social or political.

It is in A Theory of Freedom, however, that we can find elements to support the idea

that Pettit conceives of human[CL6] subjects as fundamentally vulnerable. There, Pettit

develops a conception of social freedom that is more comprehensive than his political

conception of freedom as non-domination, but that serves as a ground for the latter. Even

though he does not use the term vulnerability in this text, Pettit repeatedly alludes to the two

notions included in the concept: dependency and exposure. Dependency appears in Pettit’s

definition of autonomy understood as discursive control. Indeed, autonomy as discursive

control supposes that the agent depends on others’ attitude to develop her autonomy, and

more precisely on the presence of discourse-friendly relationships.29

If she is not considered

as an equal interlocutor, she will not be able to take part in conversations and to achieve

discursive control over her actions. It follows that the agent is, in turn, exposed to others’

power, in so far as others can prevent her from developing or exercising her autonomy. This

happens when she is despised, ignored or constrained for instance. So Pettit[CL7] underlines

the fact that human beings can achieve autonomy only in so far as they are part of certain

types of relationship – namely discourse-friendly relationships –, he also insists on the fact

that relationships can deeply alter autonomy. His conception of freedom is based on the idea

that because human beings are interdependent, they are fundamentally vulnerable to one

another.

In acknowledging the fundamental vulnerability of human beings and in supporting a

relational conception of autonomy, Pettit joins other theorists who have criticized the atomist

29 Pettit, Ph., A Theory of Freedom. From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001):

69-72.

14

anthropology of some strands of liberalism. Authors as different as Joan Tronto30

, Martha

Nussbaum31

or Axel Honneth32

for instance, all underline the fundamental vulnerability of

human beings. They redefine autonomy in a relational way33

and offer alternative political

ideals grounded on the acknowledgement of vulnerability. However, these authors tend to

reduce vulnerability to an anthropological category, that is, a common and irreducible fact of

our lives. As a result, they do not convincingly account for the fact that some people are more

vulnerable than others, because of the social situations they happen to be in; moreover, they

do not design political answers to these forms of unequal vulnerabilities. In both respects,

Pettit’s approach is more promising. Indeed, Pettit does not reduce vulnerability to an

anthropological category. He pays attention to the social conditions which reduce or increase

vulnerability and acknowledges that not all people are equally vulnerable. In his perspective,

that we are fundamentally vulnerable does not only mean that we need the support and

30 Tronto, J., Moral Boundaries (1993).

31 Nussbaum, M., Women and Human Development. The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge (Mass.), Cambridge University

Press, 2000; Frontiers of Justice. Disability, Nationality and Species Membership, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2006.

32 Honneth, A., The Struggle for Recognition (1995); “Decentered Autonomy. The Subject After the Fall”, trans. J.

Farrell, in Honneth, A., The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (SUNY Press, 1995):

261-271.

33 As Pettit’s approach made clear, relational conceptions of autonomy define autonomy neither as an individual

property which grows naturally with the development of the agent cognitive skills, nor as an ability that is best used

alone, through the solitary definition of one’s own ends for instance. Rather, autonomy is conceived as a relational

ability that can only develop with the support of others and that is best used within interaction. On relational

conceptions of autonomy, see also Nedelsky, J., “Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities”,

Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, n°1, (1989): 7–36 ; Friedman, M., “Autonomy and Social Relationships”, in Diana

T. Meyers (eds.), Feminists Rethink the Self, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997): 40–61 ; Mackenzie, C. and Stoljar,

N. (eds.), Relational Autonomy. Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self, (Oxford, New York, Oxford

University Press, 2000); Anderson, J. and Christman, J. (eds.), Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays,

(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005).

15

cooperation of other in order to develop our abilities, whether in the form of care or

recognition. It also means that we are exposed to a specific risk: that of domination. That is

why a politics aiming at creating a society of equals should prevent the transformation of

relations of mutual interdependence into relations of domination.

Pettit draws a strong and complex connection between vulnerability and domination.

It is this: vulnerability understood as a fundamental aspect of human life opens up the

possibility of domination; yet domination both increases and changes the nature of

vulnerability. Domination, conceived as a social relationship where one agent has the

capacity to interfere arbitrarily in another’s course of action, can be seen as a primary cause

of the intensification of vulnerability. The problematic vulnerability produced by domination

is no longer compatible with autonomy; on the contrary, it indicates that autonomy can no

longer be exercised or maintained[CL8].

This is made clear in Pettit’s portrayal of the dominated agent. The dominated agent

is vulnerable to the actions of the dominant agent, in the sense that she is exposed to the

dominant agent’s arbitrary power. But, in addition, she can be said to be especially vulnerable

when this exposure alters her sense of self-respect and agency in the long term. As Pettit

suggests, domination does not only produce attitudes of strategic deference and anticipation

aimed at avoiding retaliation and punishment. In addition to these immediate responses, it can

also produce a vulnerability which manifests itself in feelings of powerlessness and anxiety,

and eventually in a lack of self-respect on the part of the dominated agent.34

Here then,

vulnerability does not only refer to a mere and common situation of dependence and

exposure; it more specifically describes the subjective and long-term effects of a relationship

that deprives the agent of her autonomy by refusing her the kind of recognition that is due to

equals.

34 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997): 88.

16

So while problematic vulnerability is anchored in fundamental vulnerability, it cannot

be conflated with it.

4. From vulnerability to non-domination.

From a normative point of view, the distinction between these two levels of vulnerability and

the identification of domination as a central factor of vulnerability intensification are crucial

and explain the specific attractiveness of the republican ideal of non-domination. That human

beings are fundamentally vulnerable means that they can only develop their autonomy in

relation to each other, which implies that social relationships should be of major importance

for political theory. This importance given to social relationships, and not only to the

distribution of material goods, in the creation of a just society is underlined in all the theories

that start from the premise of vulnerability, whether care ethics or recognition theories. In so

far [CL9]as the idea of fundamental vulnerability is linked to a relational conception of

autonomy, this is not surprising. However, the force of republicanism is to add that

fundamental vulnerability can be increased and people’s autonomy inhibited by specific

forms of social relationships, domination relationships. This explains that republicanism

focuses on the pursuit of domination in order to achieve relational equality Non-domination

promises the end of domination and problematic vulnerability, while acknowledging the

inescapable facts of interdependence and fundamental vulnerability. This is so because, as

Pettit repeatedly insists, one can only be free (non-dominated) in the company of others:

republican freedom is an eminently[CL10] social freedom. Freedom here appears as an

intrinsically social and relational good, one which is not achieved through the absence of

(certain types of) institutions and relationships but rather through the presence (and active

fostering) of the right kind of institutions and relationships. The ideal of non-domination

promotes the creation of a social environment where everyone is equally protected against

domination and has the opportunity to develop and exercise their autonomy. In turn, such an

17

ideal explains why republicanism is so prompt to embrace the four key components that are

central to relational theories of equality.

5. Responding to vulnerability, promoting equality: the republican recommendations

We saw that Pettit’s republicanism of non-domination is rooted in a twofold conception of

vulnerability. In addition, this conception generates specific political and institutional

recommendations to protect citizens from vulnerability intensification and to promote the

creation of a society of equals.35

To achieve status equality conceived as equal protection against domination, Pettit

makes several recommendations. Taken together, they can be understood as the concrete way

in which republicanism plans to address the four key components that are at the heart of

relational theories of equality. First, Pettit advocates an original model of democracy, namely

“contestatory democracy”, whose goal is to give citizens collective control over the terms of

common life, thereby avoiding domination of one group over another.36

Second, Pettit insists

on the importance of civic virtues, conceived as attitudes and dispositions necessary to

prevent domination, whether political or social. Vigilance toward the state and respect toward

other citizens are required for non-domination to be sustained. For republicans, these civic

virtues can be promoted by acting on the collective norms that frame individual conduct37

and through a specific republican education.38

Third, Pettit seeks to address the problems of

35 Lovett, F. Pettit, P. “Neorepublicanism: A Normative and Institutional Research Program”, Annual Review of

Political Science, 12, (2009):11-29.

36 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997). Pettit has furthered developed his theory of democracy in On the People’s Terms.

37 Pettit, Ph. and Brennan, G., The Economy of Esteem. An Essay on Civil and Political Society, (Oxford, Oxford University

Press, 2004).

38 Maynor, J., Republicanism in the Modern World, (2003); Laborde, C., Critical Republicanism. The Hijab Controversy and

Political Philosophy (2008).

18

domination in the economic sphere and its consequences in the social sphere. Without

supporting a strict equality of resources39

, he argues for a politics of redistribution aiming at

preventing the imbalances of resources that fuel social relationships of domination.

Moreover, he suggests that the republican ideal could lead to a reorganization of production

and re-distribution of power in the workplace, notably through greater collective rights and

contestation opportunities for workers.40

The republican ideal is dynamic and its precise institutional recommendations must

remain open-ended. 41

However, it is clear that a society of non-domination is a society

where citizens are equally recognized as fundamentally vulnerable and equally protected

against social processes of vulnerability intensification. Pettit’s republicanism, therefore,

appears as a plausible and attractive theory of relational equality.

III. The limits of republicanism:

Vulnerability beyond domination.

In this section, we reflect on some limitations inherent to a domination-centered political

theory of vulnerability. The question we want to ask is this: Are all forms of problematic

vulnerability connected to domination? Clearly not: there are social processes which inhibit

citizens’ autonomy and put status equality into question, yet are not adequately captured by

the republican framework of domination. We first show that Pettit’s conception of

domination cannot fully account for long-term structural vulnerability. We then suggest that

39 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997); Pettit, Ph., On the People’s Terms (2012): 77-92.

40 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997):141-142.

41 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997): 146.

19

problematic vulnerability does not always result from domination. It follows that the ideal of

non-domination might not be sufficient to protect citizens’ autonomy and achieve relational

equality.

1. Domination and long-term structural vulnerability.

According to Pettit, agents are dominated when they are dependent on a social relationship in

which other agents wield arbitrary power over them. Pettit explains that power is arbitrary

when the agent who exerts it does not take into account the relevant interests of the agent he

acts upon42

; and he argues that the best way to prevent it is to secure means of contestation

for the less powerful agents.43

This definition shows that a central characteristic of the

republican conception of domination is that it is agent-centered. It implies that there is an

identifiable agent, whether individual or collective, that can exert arbitrary power upon

another agent; and it assumes that domination will mainly affect the choice set available to

the dominated agent, either by attaching a high cost to one option or by making another

disappear. From this point of view, the republican conception differs from other accounts of

domination, such as Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu or Iris Marion Young’s, who all define

domination as a structural relationship, rather than as an interpersonal one. From their

perspective, domination does not need to be intentional or refer to the will of an identifiable

agent. It can be defined as a relationship based on a structural imbalance of power, which

affects, not necessarily the choice set available to the dominated agent, but their conception

of themselves and their ability to think of themselves as agents capable of choice.

Undoubtedly, the republican agential conception of domination has strong advantages.

As Frank Lovett noticed44

, it can account for most of the typical relationships of domination,

42 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997): 55.

43 Pettit, Ph., Republicanism, (1997):61sq.

44 Lovett, F., A General Theory of Domination and Justice, (2010).

20

from slavery to serfdom, through to traditional marriage or capitalist relationships between

employers and employees. Yet, by contrast to structural conceptions of domination, it does

not adequately account for the long-term effects of domination; nor – as a result – is it well-

equipped to address them. Feminist theory has shown that domination produces long-term

subjective effects on women, not only in the sense that it deeply affects the way women

perceive themselves and assess their agency in the long run45

, but also in the sense that once

the effective relationships of domination have been removed, problematic vulnerability

remains. Those who were once subjected to domination or who grew up in a social

environment that still bears the mark of past relationships of domination, may no longer be

dominated in Pettit’s sense, but they still suffer the effects of domination.

To illustrate this claim, we draw on Bourdieu’s writings on male domination. As

Bourdieu noticed in the last chapter of Masculine Domination46

, the formal structures of male

domination have been removed in France. Women have fought for, and won, equal rights in

the family and the public sphere; they have entered the labor market and secured financial

independence; and they have achieved high levels of academic success. Their formal status is

equal to men’s. Yet, women’s vulnerability has not disappeared, even if it now takes a form

which Pettit’s conception of domination cannot easily account for. For instance, despite the

law voted in 1999 to promote an equal proportion of women and men in the French National

Assembly, women remain under-represented in the Assembly, as well as in other places of

political power; despite the laws demanding wage equality between men and women since

the mid-eighties, women’s wages remain inferior to men’s wages; despite the legal

recognition of conjugal rape as a crime, women remain subjected to this kind of violence in a

far too large numbers. Women continue to do most of the care and domestic work at home,

45 Something that Pettit notices.

46 Bourdieu, P., Masculine Domination, (trans. by R. Nice, Stanford University Press, 2002).

21

which can lead them to lower their professional expectations; they are vulnerable to

harassment on the streets, which leads them to restrict their use of the public space.

Moreover, sociological analyses suggest that women have often internalized their subordinate

status, in such a way that they do not always take advantage of the social and legal

opportunities that have been designed for them. So even if they are not actually subjected to

domination in Pettit’s sense, they remain especially vulnerable in the sense that they, as a

historically constituted vulnerability class, are deprived of the social conditions fully to

exercise their autonomy.

This example draws attention to the power of the social norms and representations

that underpin domination and highlights their central role in the maintenance of unequal

social relationships, even in the absence of actual relationships of domination.47

Internalized

by social agents and inscribed in the functioning of social institutions, these norms and

representations categorize social agents, attribute differential meanings and values to their

social positions and identities, and equip them with unequal social power. For example, the

idea that women are naturally capable of caring for others helped justify the legal obligation

that women had to ask for their husband’s permission to work outside the home. This has

now been abrogated, yet the idea that domestic and care work is a natural task for women has

persisted (after all, someone has to take care of the kids). Deeply ingrained social perceptions

prevent women from committing to a professional career on an equal footing with men, even

though no one – neither their husband, nor other men – dominates[CL11] them at that particular

moment.

We may wonder whether Pettit’s agential concept of domination is the most

appropriate to account for these phenomena of adaptive preferences in response to social

contexts structured by norms and representations which assign different and unequally valued

47 Laborde, C., Critical Republicanism. The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy, (2008).

22

social roles and identities to social agents. Maybe the concept of oppression better describes

the obstacles to autonomy and status equality that are at stake here. At any rate, Pettit’s

conception of domination does not seem well-equipped to respond to these phenomena

because it focuses on interpersonal relationships of domination and does not take sufficiently

into account the weight of norms and representations in the constitution of agents’ identities

and social power. A more structural conception of domination would incorporate an analysis

of the role of social norms in the long-term persistence of vulnerability.48

This would affect

the scope of the political ideal of non-domination. In addition to combating interpersonal

relationships of domination, republicans would aim to act upon those social representations

and norms that give differential meaning and value to social agents’ identities and positions.

Whether such a comprehensive reworking of domination – in line with the more radical

theories of recognition theorists such as Iris Marion Young – is compatible with the liberal

inspiration of Pettit’s republicanism remains open to question.

There is, however, an even more daunting challenge for republicans. Women’s

vulnerability, we have seen, is at least historically connected to pervasive structures of gender

domination. Yet, there are other forms of problematic vulnerability which are produced by

social processes entirely unconnected to domination, at least as Pettit defines it. We turn to

such cases in the next and last section.

2. Vulnerability as the result of social disqualification and disaffiliation.

The concept of vulnerability, understood as an inhibition of autonomy through social

processes which deny the relational and social conditions of agents’ autonomy, is central to

the sociological analyses of two different social processes that can be considered as typical of

48 For a similar objection to the narrowness of Pettit’s conception of domination and its difficulty to account for

unintentional social processes that threaten people’s agency, see Krause, S. R., “Beyond Non-Domination: Agency,

Inequality and the Meaning of Freedom”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 39 (2), 2013: 187-2007.

23

late modernity. The first one is social disqualification and has been studied by Serge Paugam;

the second one is disaffiliation and has been extensively analyzed by Robert Castel.

Paugam introduced the concept of social disqualification while working on poverty in

France.49

Drawing on Georges Simmel’s work, Paugam defines the poor as a group of

citizens who depend mainly on welfare assistance for their subsistence. He then introduces

the concept of social disqualification to account both for the objective aspects of their social

situation (what it results from) and its subjective aspects (how it is experienced). Social

disqualification is defined as a social process whereby an agent is excluded from employment

and forced to depend on welfare for her subsistence; this is the objective aspect of poverty.

This process goes hand in hand with a second one, which accounts for the subjective aspects

of poverty: stigmatization. Through stigmatization, the agent’s identity is defined negatively

in reference to her subaltern social position, and paradoxically presented as its cause. In this

regard, social disqualification implies a social judgment based on a norm – here the norm that

defines social success and social respectability by reference to paid work and economic

independence – that the agent is perceived as violating. Stigmatization produces a negative

identity that welfare recipients conform to in their dealings with welfare officials; but this

negative identity threatens their sense of their own value and can lead them to isolate

themselves from others. Only those who can expect to find a job quickly and who can count

on other sources of social recognition – family, friends, involvement in professional training

or local associations – can resist the stigma of dependency to welfare. But even in these

cases, being socially identified as ‘a loser’, as ‘a lazy person’ or as a ‘parasite’ because of a

social situation one did not choose causes suffering and self-doubt, and eventually alters the

49 Paugam, S., La disqualification sociale. Essai sur la nouvelle pauvreté, (second edition, Paris, PUF, 2000).

24

affective ground of personal autonomy.50

Can a republicanism of non-domination respond to the vulnerability produced by

social disqualification and secure the affective basis of welfare recipients’ autonomy? To be

sure, as we saw, republicanism has resources to address the ‘expressive deficit’ of impersonal

bureaucracies such as the welfare state, when they humiliate recipients and fail to treat them

as equal citizens. Yet such critique of bureaucratic domination does not seem to get to the

heart of the disqualification complaint. The negative stigma which equates welfare

dependency with social failure would remain, fuelled as it is by well-entrenched public and

political discourses. Welfare recipients, in sum, experience a distinct harm of stigmatization –

which cannot be reduced to any actual domination they might also suffer.

Sociologist Robert Castel, for his part, has brought to light another process, which he

calls ‘disaffiliation’.51

Like disqualification, disaffiliation is brought about by unemployment.

But it refers to a different process: the weakening and loss of the social ties that protect

individuals and secure what Castel calls ‘the supports of individuality’. These supports are

50 Paugam’s definition of social disqualification bears some similarities with Iris Young’s definition of oppression. In

Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990: 38), Young defines oppression as a set of systematic institutional processes

that prevent people from learning and using their skills in socially recognised settings, or that inhibit their ability to

play and communicate with others or to express their feelings and perspectives on social life in contexts where

others can listen. In so far as it precludes self-realization and prevent people from forming a positive conception of

themselves, oppression in Young’s sense and social disqualification produce similar effects. The advantage of

Paugam’s perspective however is that it provides a precise description of the social mechanisms through which such

effects are produced, when Young’s category of oppression includes several different social processes – namely

exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. If these processes increase people’s

vulnerability by affecting the way in which they relate to themselves, we think it is best to distinguish them if we are

to define ways to overcome them.

51 Castel, R., Les métamorphoses de la question sociale. Une chronique du salariat, (Paris, Folio Essais, 1999). See also the

articles collected in Castel, R., La montée des incertitudes. Travail, protections, statut de l’individu, (Paris, Seuil, 2009).

25

the resources that individuals get from their integration in social groups and which enable

them to become autonomous agents. Castel argues that, in modern societies, social protection

rests on two kinds of social relationships: the agent’s integration in a local network of close

relationships and her integration in a professional collective. He then distinguishes four

typical zones of integration/protection: integration (stable job and strong local network),

welfare (dependency to welfare; solid local network), vulnerability (insecure job and

precarious local network), disaffiliation (unemployment and social isolation). Depending on

the economic and political contexts of the time, the zones shrink or expand, thus determining

the degree of cohesion of a society. Recently, the zone of social vulnerability has expanded.

While individualization has progressively weakened familial and local networks,

contemporary societies face the rise of mass unemployment as well as job insecurity. The

conjunction of these evolutions jeopardizes agents’ integration into stable networks and

partly deprives them of the social supports that are necessary to face the uncertainties of

existence. More and more people are drifting away, living from day to day and trying to

avoid plunging into poverty and isolation when an unexpected event happens.

Disaffiliation, understood as the weakening of the social ties that secure agents’

integration and give them the necessary resources to behave autonomously, is irreducible and

even unconnected to domination in Pettit’s sense. Republicans such as Pettit have advocated

robust policies of social welfare and distribution, but they have done so on the ground that

lack of basic resources makes individuals vulnerable to domination. Yet a disaffiliated

individual is not primarily or essentially vulnerable to the domination of others (although of

course she may be). She is, instead, vulnerable to social marginalization. There is a distinct

and autonomous pathology of social relationships of interdependence, grounded on the denial

of interdependence and the weakening of social ties, rather than the exercise of arbitrary

power.

26

*

In his advocacy of the republican ideal, Pettit suggests that the domination complaint is

central to the claims of many contemporary social movements. He argues that republicanism

provides an accurate language to describe the social experiences these social movements

articulate and criticize. For Pettit, the relevance of political theory partly depends on its

capacity to grasp social agents’ experience and to provide standards to make sense of it,

criticize it and transform it, if necessary – an idea that is also at the heart of critical theory. In

Pettit’s case, however, the argument is double-edged. He is right to say that the domination

complaint is echoed in a wide range of social movements which struggles for more equality.

But he is perhaps too quick in suggesting that it can subsume all pathological forms of social

interdependence. Or so at least we have claimed in this chapter. Because it is rooted in an

anthropology of mutual interdependence, republicanism can account for the fact that people

are fundamentally vulnerable and justify that political theory gives central importance to

people’s relationships to one another. By showing that fundamental vulnerability is unequally

increased and autonomy unequally jeopardized by social and political relationships of

domination, it provides a ground for the promotion of freedom as non-domination as well as

detailed political and institutional recommendations to do so. However, the republican

concept of domination may not be strong enough to do all the work which Pettit would like it

to do – particularly if it remains narrowly agential and thereby ill-equipped to capture more

structural forms of domination, oppression and social marginalization. In so far as not all

problematic vulnerabilities are the product of domination in Pettit’s sense, a republicanism of

non-domination may not be sufficient to create a society of equals.