Civic Republicanism, Citizenship and Education

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief introduction to civic republicanism, providing a historical overview, and focusing in particular on the work of scholars of modern republicanism in the last 30 years. It shows why liberty is the cornerstone of republican theory and discusses two types of liberty – liberty as nondomination and participative liberty. Following this, the chapter sets out the differences between instrumentalist republicanism and intrinsic republicanism. The nature of sovereignty and the relation between a republican polity and the nation state are also discussed. In the final section, the implications for civic education are considered. Here, a discussion of civic education in England is provided as an illustrative case, and it is suggested that while the National Curriculum for civic education has a communitarian bias, it also has features that are welcome to civic republicans. Finally, it is proposed that central to civic education, from a republican perspective, is the need for a clear narrative of liberty which has both a historical and a contemporary dimension.