Abstract
This contribution will introduce a conceptual analysis of republicanism as an ideology following a conceptual approach to ideologies developed by Michael Freeden. I conceive republicanism through a synthetisation of neo-Roman and neo-Athenian republican discourses as 1) a dynamic ideology inspired by both Greek and Roman antiquity, 2) unified by an interconnected cluster of overlapping and intersecting concepts, and 3) displaying a distinctive conceptual morphology. This understanding offers an alternative to a common depiction of republicanism as a story of a single master-concept, which narrows our understanding of republicanism and its ideological complexity and versatility. Instead, I will present a morphological model of republicanism consisting of nearly two dozen concepts grouped around the interdependent core values of freedom, self-rule and mixed constitution. Such an approach emphasises sustaining links within a larger cluster of republican concepts and offers a new perspective on how the often-disentangled discourses of neo-Roman and neo-Athenian republicanism could be brought together.
Next, I will suggest how this unified account of republicanism constitutes a unique position within a broader ideological spectrum. I will demonstrate this by presenting my second diagram exploring republicanism's relations with other ideologies, particularly liberalism, conservatism, socialism and populism. I argue that republicanism has been appearing as a standalone ideology in some contexts, but in others, it appeared as a subset of some of the "neighbouring" ideologies in the guise of ideological fusions such as labour republicanism, feminist republicanism, etc. I suggest that while the traditional republican interpretations of the individual concepts often survived in these ideological mutations, a general republican morphology disintegrated in the 19th century and ceased to be a standalone ideology up until the recent neo-republican revival.
Arguably, neo-republicanism could meet the same fate if the gap between neo-Athenian and neo-Roman republicanism becomes too great and both disappear in respective neighbouring ideologies. However, if we rethink their relation and approach them as two strands of the same ideological family (i.e., displaying different emphases but still utilising similar conceptual apparatus), we might better appreciate the synergies between the two major republican discourses. That, in turn, might provide a larger employable toolbox at the disposal of neo-republican theorists useful in their ideological polemics with liberalism and populism. I end by arguing why, from a morphological perspective, neo-republican self-localisation between liberalism and populism indeed has a case and how republicanism constitutes a middle position between them.