The impossibility of a Paretian republican? Some comments on Pettit and Sen

Abstract

Introduction: In a recent paper, Philip Pettit (2001) argues that there are parallels between Sen’s account of freedom and the republican account of freedom, as outlined in Pettit (1997). Sen’s account defines freedom as decisive preference. The republican account defines freedom as the absence of domination. The absence of domination requires the absence of interference not just in the actual world, but also in all relevant possible worlds. According to Pettit, the parallel between the two accounts lies in their “emphasis on the connection between freedom and non-dependence” (Pettit 2001, p. 18). Pettit argues that, on both accounts, for an individual to be free, the absence of interference – or the decisiveness of the individual’s preferences – must be content-independent and context-independent. “Non-interference is not sufficient for freedom under Sen’s view, because an agent might enjoy non-interference – might even enjoy content-independently decisive preference – without enjoying preference that is decisive in the full sense: in particular, without enjoying favour-[or context]-independently decisive preference.” (Pettit 2001, p. 18) Pettit attributes the content-independence requirement to Sen himself, but says that the context-independence requirement “is not explicitly marked by Sen” (Pettit 2001, p. 6). In this paper, I sketch a social-choice-theoretic formalization of Pettit's reading of Sen, and argue that, (i) Sen's own definition of freedom (as opposed to capability) already satisfies both the content-independence requirement and the context-independence requirement; (ii) the contrast between classical liberal and republican accounts of freedom can be captured by this formalization; (iii) that contrast lies not in the fact that one account considers only the actual world whereas the other considers also possible worlds, but rather in how large the class of possible worlds is that each account considers; (iv) the republican account of freedom (at least if stated demandingly) is affected by a version of Sen's liberal paradox – an inconsistency between a universal domain condition, freedom and the weak Pareto principle – and (v) some standard escape-routes from the liberal paradox – namely escape-routes via domain restriction – may not be (easily) available to the republican. Hence, depending on the reading and particularly on how demandingly the republican account is stated, we may be faced with the impossibility of a Paretian republican. This raises the question of whether relaxing the weak Pareto principle to ensure individual freedom is consistent with the republican position.