Republicanism: Update as a Theory of Free States

Abstract

The neo-republicanism of Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and Maurizio Viroli has the merit of having recovered the republican idea of ​​freedom to critically approach the different forms of domination that permeate contemporary democratic societies. However, in the first section, it is argued that such normative proposals make insufficient use of the critical reaches of republican freedom, because they only instrumentalize it to defend the freedoms of individuals, despite the fact that it also served the republicans of the past to raise the sovereignty of States in the field of international relations. Thus, in a second section, a vindication of republicanism is proposed as a useful political discourse to critically position itself in the face of the external domination suffered, above all, by peripheral states such as those in Latin America due to the conditionalities imposed by international financial organizations, multinational companies and states. hegemonic in the framework of the neoliberal globalization process of the last decades.