Introduction: recalling republicanism and its alternatives in post-ideological era
KIM Seok-hyeon.
first upoaded: 2022-12-31.
last updated: 2022-12-31.
(*) This article is still under editorial process and only for reading but not for referring or citing. The final version will be published in 'intelligence korea, 2021-22'. The Korean version is: intelligencekor.kr/periodical/article.html?bno=18
The collapse of the communist block for 1989-1990 seemed to foretell the eventual victory of liberalism over all else. Fukuyama's book (first published in 1992) vividly captures such a tone of the moment by envisioning a peaceful world governed by liberal democracy, victor of ideologies. However, soon after, the world became turbulent, quite contrary to such an optimistic view. Since 1991, the former Yugo-slavia has become torn apart into many states through the national and religious conflicts, which cannot be said to be finalized yet. Such a countering atmosphere was reflected in Huntington's book (First published in 1996). He explicitly provided a counter-hypothesis to Fukuyama' one: the world will be divided and reorganized along several cultural lines. The hard-liners of the Bush Administration who expressed their explicit antagonism toward 'rogue' or 'axis of evil' states, mainly anti-US Islamic states, were said to share Chiritan evangelism, which seemed to support Huntington's hypothesis. The financial crisis in 2008-9 that hit severely advanced western economies, further undermined the credo of liberalism: that is, the idea of small government and the free flow of capital beyond national boundaries. Though there was a brief period of insurrections in Arabic nations, called 'The Spring in Arab', that cried for liberal reform and partly succeeded to overturn old despotic rulers, the situation became even worse. Religious radicals called IS ('Islamic State') took advantage of the moments and drove many Arab states into unending civil wars. The consequence was millions of refugees, some of which fled to Europe and incurred a strong anti-immigration attitude. In France, the far right political group led by Le Pen began to gain its political ground as a major party. The British referendum turned out to support the exit from the EU in 2014, dubbed 'Brexit'. The Trump administration triggered the trade war with China. One immediate casualty was the rising Chinese IT company Huawei that was claimed to espionage by the backdoor of their networking instruments. The company was sanctioned by the Trump administration regarding its crucial outsourced semiconductors and was dwarfed to a domestic one, losing its international presence. The Covid-19 pandemic since the end of 2019 and the meantime international conflicts deepened the political divides between China and the West. Many western countries blamed China for its untimely and non-transparent responses to Covid-19. On the other hand, amidst the pandemic, while continuing its expansionist ambition over the South China Sea. China flexed its muscle on Hong Kong by tightening its security measures and began to threaten Taiwan's de facto independence, The Trump-succeeding President Biden, in spite of his opposition to Trump in almost all of domestic politics, has been continuing the antagonistic stance with China furthering sanctions in the strategic semiconductor and car-battery industries. Putin's ambition for Great Russia and Russia' invasion of Ukraine this year has shocked the world and has totally destabilized the post-1989/1990 international order.
Major events in the world since 1989-90 happened to unfold quite contrary to the optimistic forecast of the world based on liberal ideology or order. Liberalism would be better be said to have contracted rather than expanded. Furthermore, any ideologies of universal appeal seem to be weakening and so the world seems to become more fragmented than otherwise. Fragmentation seems to occur not only in international politics but also in domestic one. Polarizations of political sides have tended to get wide, narrowing the mid-portion. Saying otherwise, identity politics is becoming stronger both in international and in national scale. The modern era based on universal ideologies or values seems to crumble down and the post-modern era seems to turn into its worst direction. Surely, this situation makes us feel chaotic and at a loss. It is impossible to see what the future of the world will be and pessimistic views cannot be precluded. But envisioning a turn-around and proposing a certain plan to enable such a turn-around should not be precluded either. For the human being is not a passive accepter of the world and history but an active driver of its destiny. Of course, naive optimism won't help. In order to bring about a certain change, we need to be realists who ground themselves on current and historical facts or a certain set of experiences that have explicative power to guide us steering through the world. Ideologies can have such a role since an ideology is an overarching system of ideas that encompasses such facts and experiences, in my belief.
It is true that ideology is not only a very elusive concept but also a controversial one. Though enlightenment philosophers termed 'ideology' as a study of social laws.[1] it was soon derided and confronted by Napoleon as unrealistic 'airy-fairy' or dream. Karl Marx even regarded it as a dangerous falsification of social reality in favor of the ruling elites.(Bo Stråth, 2013) But recent studies put 'ideologies' as essential features and characteristics of social and political life. As long as people express and exert their will through the window of ideology, it is necessary to understand the development of society in terms of ideology. (Oxford, preface, p. v) I also support this line of thought and consider it very useful.
And we have another complicated question about what kinds of ideology we have to rely on as proper windows to see the world. There are a bunch of ideologies depending on researchers or proponents. Let alone the difficulty to identify ideologies, they are not mutually exclusive or somewhat mutative. The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (first published in 2013) lists and explains as many as fifteen families of ideology. The reason they use 'family of ideology' is that even a commonly known ideology cannot be uniquely defined but a loose collection of ideas under a common heading of ideology.
The ideologies I will discuss also happen to be in the Handbook's list, which is not purely a coincidence. For the ideologies that I am concerned about are so well-recognized and embedded in our daily language. But I will not simply re-list and describe some ideologies which were already well expounded. I have a certain kind of hypothesis in mind that I am yet hesitant to strongly assert but at least I wish to use as a narrative. My reading and understanding of literature on ideologies implies that republicanism, though not explicitly denoted, was an important driver of social movement in the early modern era (from around the Renaissance or the sixteenth century till around the eighteenth century) and it culminated in the American revolution and in the French one. But the nineteenth century saw republicanism failing to keep on with its ideal in reality and, at least partially because of that, a bunch of alternative ideologies sweeping the world while competing with each other. So republicanism can be positioned as a progenitor of ideologies in my view or at least narrative. It should not be missed that there are scholars who disagree with this idea and rather suggest liberalism in the place of republicanism or at least prefer to interpret the early modern era in terms of the development of liberalism. Indeed, republicanism had been almost forgotten or not given a serious weight until in the 1970s a group of scholars re-interpreted the political progress of the early modern era in view of republicanism. The oblivion or at least negligence on republicanism is ironic, considering that the word 'republic' is commonly ingrained in modern politics as shown in country names, constitution articles, party names, and so on. Maybe the word 'republic', like the air, is too common to be noticed for its significance. The resurrection of republicanism is not just an academic concern. Liberalism has exposed its fallacies since the 1970s while being triumphant at the same time. On top of them are rising inequalities and weakening capabilities of the government to coordinate the society. While republicanism and liberalism share the value of liberty but just differently interpret it (as shown in another section) and also put an importance on 'public' as in its latin etymology of 'republic', that is, 'res publica', republicanism can be a very persuasive alternative or at least a compensatory ideology to liberalism. So I focus on republicanism and its development over time. The other ideologies that will be disused are not selected just for their own sake but for my concern on the revival of republicanism. I choose liberalism, socialism, and nationalism that emerged as alternatives to republicanism. To me, all the three are very much relevant to today's world politics as well as to academic or historic concerns. Furthermore, they are strongly interwoven with republicanism: seeming to be competing with republicanism but sharing or inheriting certain values with it. So understanding republicanism and the other ideologies are mutually beneficial and it is also helpful to understand the current world which is consciously and unconsciously guided or governed by those ideologies.
Though there has been accumulation of academic research on republicanism since the 1970s. republicanism has been assumed to be so self-evident that it has not been given much attention and has not been properly articulated in public. So it is necessary and useful to begin with the introduction of the historical development of republicanism. Historical approaches to ideology may well reveal the multi-faceted - political, economical, social and so on-experiences of people. Though theories are essential in identifying and attributing explanatory power to ideology let alone republicanism, they will be briefly introduced to help understanding the historical development of republicanism.
To fit a historical approach, I organize the contents in a time frame. In the following sections, firstly, I will begin with ancient Greek and Roman republics, which are regarded as the origin or source of republicanism. The ancient republics happened to be established without a strong connection with republicanism. Republicanism as a political recognition or goal began to emerge much later in the Renaissance. So ancient republics can be also dubbed 'proto-republics'. Secondly, I will present the development of Italian city republics through the middle ages and the Renaissance. These Italian city republics resulted from the intentional efforts of Italian citizens and republicanism began to be studied and theorized by the Renaissance scholars such as Machiavelli. So those Italian city republics and ideas about them are called 'classical republicanism' by the recent scholars who revived republicanism. The adjective term 'classical' is used to connote both the beginning of republican discourses and its influences on the later development of republics and republicanism in the modern era. Thirdly, some republics of the early modern era will be discussed. The Swiss Confederation, the Dutch Republic, Great Britain, and the United States of America are those. There does not seem to be an academic consensus in identifying early modern republics. But academic efforts seem to be made to expand the category of early modern republics and the four republics are certainly such cases. My list is probably limited. For instance, I did not include the Poland-Lithuania republic considering its rather insignificance on later development of republics and republicanism. Neither do I include the French republic partly because there were so many regime changes in France since the revolution; also because France in the nineteenth century was a hotbed of all the rising ideologies and so it is hard to regard France of the nineteenth century as a republican model. Fourthly, I will present a set of burgeoning ideologies from around the nineteenth century or the French revolution. As aforementioned, the developments of liberalism, socialism and nationalism will be discussed. Though surely the list of them is short in scope, I believe that it is good enough to understand the political development of the world from then to now and so is rather an optimal scope for the purpose of this writing given time and space. Finally, in the concluding section, I will highlight the implications from the review of ideologies in the preceding sections regarding the political and economical difficulties of the current world.
Notes
[1] Antoine Destutt de Tracy, Enlightenment philosopher, is regarded as the progenitor of the word. (Freeden, Michael, p. 14; Oxford: chapter 1)