RESEARCH AREAS
Below, I outline the main questions that drive my scholarly research, along with relevant publications.
Ingredients of a Free and Pro-Flourishing Civil Order
OVERVIEW:
Perhaps the most fundamental question of political philosophy is, under which conditions can the customs, norms and institutions that frame citizens' common life underpin a free and flourishing way of life for all?
Much modern political thought points to the institutions and laws of the modern State as a fundamentally important framework for the protection and promotion of personal freedom, but this State-centric focus may blind us to other equally and possible even more important supports for the freedom to flourish.
In imagining a pro-flourishing civil order, we face a number of important questions:
In a society marked by high levels of complexity, social fragmentation, and deep moral and religious difference, how can governments promote peace and public order without being perceived to protect the interests of one group over others?
How can civil governments be empowered to govern society effectively and protect citizens' basic rights without overwhelming the reasonable governmental prerogatives of non-State associations?
If personal and communal flourishing are vitally important ends of a civil order, then how can civil governments play a responsible role in promoting these ends without undermining the freedom of citizens and groups to pursue their own distinctive visions of human flourishing in a way that is informed by local knowledge and experience?
Given the fact that the human good takes many different forms, how can a society's general rules be sufficiently tolerant and capacious to permit a wide variety of different types of social activity and values?
Given the fact that human associations often require a high degree of self-regulation to achieve their ends, how can the potential for local despotism be limited without enabling an even more pervasive sort of governmental despotism?
What sort of legal, institutional and cultural supports are required in order to protect the governmental prerogatives of associations and communities, so that their adherence to wider societal norms does not suppress their distinctive ends and values?
Is it possible to conceptualise and operationalise a coherent if minimal common good for a large society without opening the door to arbitrary forms of paternalism? If so, how might the general common good and its institutional forms differ from local common goods and their institutional forms?
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS:
The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025)
Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited with Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024)
“Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Grounding and Motivating an Ethos of Social Responsibility in a Free Society.”
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 4 (December 2009), pp. 559-580
“Why Value Pluralism Does Not Support the State’s Enforcement of Liberal Autonomy: A Response to Crowder.”
Political Theory, vol. 37, no. 1 (February 2009), pp. 154-160.
“Associational Life and Liberty: A Critical Interpretation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.” In Culture, Secularisation and Democracy: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville. Edited by Hans-Martien ten Napel and Sophie van Bijsterveld (Routledge, 2024), pp. 52-69.
“Imagining a Post-Sovereign Polity as a Realistic Utopia.” In Rethinking Democracy for Post-Utopian Worlds. Alternative Political Projects After the Sovereign State. Edited by Julia Urabayen and Jorge León Casero (Springer, 2024), pp. 209-222.
“The ‘Neighbourhood as a Pivotal Element of the Infrastructure of a Flourishing Society.” In Happiness and Domestic Life: The Influence of the Home on Subjective and Social Wellbeing (New York: Routledge, 2022). With Ana Cecilia Serrano-Núñez.
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Polycentric and Pluralist Models of Governance & Social Organisation
OVERVIEW:
The past four centuries have seen a steady expansion of the powers and prerogatives of national states, and the progressive entrenchment of a highly State-centric ideology of order, that is, a Statist view of the institutional and social preconditions for an acceptable civil order.
That Statist ideology of order, and its institutional expression, are currently undergoing a severe crisis on multiple fronts: the traditional model of the welfare state is imploding under the strain of an aging population, State policies are inevitably alienating a large portion of ever-more polarised citizenry, and social problems from environmental regulation to healthcare to security are overwhelming the capacities of centralised State bureaucracies.
In this context, there is an urgent need to rethink the dominant State-centric model of governance and policy-making. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom spearheaded an alternative, polycentric approach to social coordination and governance, that privileged local knowledge and multi-lateral cooperation. This approach, in spite of its practical advantages, has not been adequately integrated into normative theories of political and legal order. With this in mind, there are a number of research problems worth investigating:
Besides certain pragmatic advantages of more horizontal forms of social order, such as their capacity to reduce moral and religious polarisation, can a more holistic case be made for more horizontal and polycentric forms of social order from the perspective of rounded human flourishing?
Given the failures of the central State to convincingly meet the challenges of justice and public order, what sort of doctrine of political authority and order could take its place, more friendly to social pluralism and polycentric governance?
What sort of society-wide constitution could provide sufficient protection against governmental and private oppression, while also being supple enough to accommodate a rich and diverse social ecology and the sorts of social experimentation and social mobility without which social learning and progress are greatly impeded?
How can historical and contemporary studies of real-world polycentric orders, such as the Hanseatic League, the Swiss Confederation, and multi-lateral approaches to the distribution of scarce resources, help to shape a normative theory of civil order more receptive to the claims and needs of non-State actors such as municipalities and universities?
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS:
The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025)
Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited with Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024)
“An Ethical Case for Bottom-Up, Polycentric Governance in a Complex Society.” In Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited by David Thunder and Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024), pp. 19-39.
“Overcoming the Myth of the Sovereign, Self-Governing People.” In Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community, ed. Trevor Stack & Rose Luminiello. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2022). pp. 125-146.
“From Polis to Metropolis: On the Limits of Classical Approaches to Governance in a Fragmented Social Landscape.” In Disciplines of the City: New Forms of Governance in Today’s Postmetropolises, ed. Julia Urabayen & Jorge León Casero (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2019), pp. 3-31.
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Uses and Abuses of Popular Sovereignty
OVERVIEW:
One of the concepts that has captured the popular imagination and played a central role in the democratic era is that of the "sovereign people" or the people in charge of its own destiny and somehow enthroned over the national State. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the democratisation of social life without some conception of a "people" authorising a government to rule on its behalf.
Yet the narrative of the "sovereign people" authorising a "sovereign State" to rule on its behalf is hard to defend as a literal description of the political process - popular "consent" to government is notoriously hard to prove - and the case can be made that the myth of popular sovereignty actually rationalises and disguises the role of hierarchy and privilege in the constitution of power in "democratic" States.
Nevertheless, the idea of a people exerting power over its collective affairs remains powerful and compelling. So it is worth investigating not only how the idea of "the people" has served to prop up oligarchic power, but also, how the idea of popular sovereignty might be somehow rehabilitated or made less susceptible to self-serving interpretations by the powerful. Here are some questions worth exploring in this regard:
Is there a way to conserve the idea of collective self-government without enthroning "the people" as the ultimate source of social authority? In other words, is it possible to conceptualise a "people" as exerting rightful power over its own destiny while reserving for it a limited jurisdiction consistent with a wide range of rival social authorities?
Given that the pathological uses of appeals to "the people," such as those we saw in Nazism or present-day Venezuela, appear to be connected to the modern State and its projects, might there be a way to sever any tight connection between "people" and "State" so that "the people" enhances identity and self-confidence without descending into violent and exclusionary forms of nationalism?
Might the idea of the "people" be re-articulated in a federalist context to allow for a range of diverse local identities and approaches to law and policy? Is there a coherent way to theorise "the people" for a federated political society, such that the society might be conceptualised as "a people of peoples"? Might this facilitate greater social diversity and reduce the prospects of a national identity becoming in instrument of oppression?
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS:
Rescuing Freedom from the Demos and Its Agents: Rethinking the Idea of the Self-Governing People. Book project in progress.
"The Sovereign State and Its Homogenising Narrative of Order." Chapter 4 of The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025).
“Imagining a Post-Sovereign Polity as a Realistic Utopia.” In Rethinking Democracy for Post-Utopian Worlds. Alternative Political Projects After the Sovereign State. Edited by Julia Urabayen and Jorge León Casero (Springer, 2024), pp. 209-222
“Overcoming the Myth of the Sovereign, Self-Governing People.” In Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community, ed. Trevor Stack & Rose Luminiello. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2022). pp. 125-146.
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Citizenship and the Pursuit of Human Excellence
OVERVIEW:
Human institutions and roles are morally fallible, no less than the humans who create and maintain them. Consequently, political roles may be an occasion of sin as much as an encouragement to virtue. We are thus confronted with the question: What is the precise contribution of citizenship to an admirable or worthy life? Does it ennoble our lives or devalue them, and if so, how?
This is hardly a new question, but it is one that has generally been sidelined by modern political philosophers, starting with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, under the pretext that politics is all about securing the conditions of public order and justice, not about “making men moral.” The modern, ethically minimalist approach to civic life tends to treat the question of human character and excellence as either incidental to, or instrumental to, the peace and justice of society.
An in-depth investigation of the relation between citizenship and human excellence would engage with questions like the following:
How far should citizens be prepared to engage with institutions that diverge sharply from their ethical ideals, in the interests of "making a difference" or changing the system from within? Under what conditions might it be wiser to defect and undertake a "politics of resistance" or rebuild new and better institutions?
What sorts of civic institutions are more likely to attract the loyalty and participation of citizens in the long run? Under which conditions might local and municipal politics potentially become a training-ground in civic virtue?
What sort of cultural and institutional order is more conducive to the emergence of strong and ethically inspiring forms of leadership, in particular in the political arena?
Given the professionalisation of politics and the plethora of challenges associated with the digital public sphere, from trolling to "deep fakes" to echo-chambers, how might we cultivate a way of life that is more responsive to rational inquiry and deliberation? What sorts of social institutions and communication hubs are most conducive to sincere, intelligent, respectful and informed dialogue about public affairs?
How might we reduce the harm of bad actors in the global digital public sphere, e.g. those who leverage social media dynamics to spread fake news or ruin people's reputations, without conferring a dangerous amount of power on private or public actors to censor views they find inconvenient or threatening?
How can we reduce the dangerous level of power currently held by Big Tech giants and their CEOs over the public sphere, without endangering the principles of a free market economy or replacing the dominance of Big Tech with an overbearing State?
What sorts of strategies might a social media company adopt to promote fruitful and informed dialogue and reduce exposure to trolling, "deep fakes," fake news, etc. without engaging in heavy-handed censorship and shadow-banning, which ends up suppressing reasonable political debate.
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS:
Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
“A Rawlsian Argument Against the Duty of Civility.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 50, no. 3 (July 2006), pp. 676-690.
“How the Attempt to Cleanse Public Discourse of 'Misinformation' Undermines Science and Rational Inquiry.” Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung (Critical Study of Society), Issue 2 (2023), pp. 175-186.
“Public Discourse Without God? Moral Disposition in Democratic Deliberation.” In Ethics Without God? The Divine in Contemporary Moral and Political Thought, ed. Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, and Jeffrey Langan. St. Augustine Press, 2007, pp. 49-64
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Normative Theories of Territorial and Non-Territorial Federalism
OVERVIEW:
Federalism is an approach to social and political cooperation based on voluntary pacts (foedera) between different collectives that have an interest in submitting some dimension of their life to inter-group governance while conserving many fundamental aspects of their internal identity, governance functions, and way of life.
At a moment like the present one, in which the central State is struggling to meet the needs and expectations of an increasingly diverse and morally and culturally fragmented citizenry, federalism offers a promising store of ideas and practices that reflect a more flexible and adapable paradigm of civil order than that of the vertical, hierarchical State.
While a good deal of work has been devoted to the conceptualisation of federal civil orders and strategies they might harness to remain stable and resilient, much less work has been done articulating a full-fledged normative theory of federalism, viz. a theory of federalism informed by an explicit account of a flourishing human life.
No less strikingly, the non-territorial component of federalism, though present in some early modern theories like that of Johannes Althusius, is either absent or muted within modern theories of federalism.
A normative theory of territorial and non-territorial federalism could help fill in these gaps in our understanding of federalism, by addressing the following questions:
Beyond certain familiar pragmatic advantages of federalism, such as its diffusion of social conflict and its capacity to unify diverse communities without imposing upon them an alienating, one-size-fits-all regime, how might a federal order be more supportive than alternative paradigms of order to the human quest to live a worthy and flourishing life?
Given that the principles of federalism are clearly relevant to non-territorial social units like universities and athletic associations, how might a single normative account of a federal civil order do justice to both the territorial and non-territorial dimensions of federalism? For example, if people develop their identity and projects in the context of non-territorial associations, surely these social realities must be protected within a civil order, no less than territorial political units like municipalities?
Under which conditions can a federal constitution protect a reasonable measure of autonomy in its constituent units without succumbing to anarchy as each unit vies for dominance or seeks to derive advantages for itself at the cost of the union? How can a federal system find a stable middle path between excessive centralisation or hierarchy and anarchistic levels of local autonomy?
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS:
Rescuing Freedom from the Demos and Its Agents: Rethinking the Idea of the Self-Governing People. Book project in progress.
“An Ethical Case for Bottom-Up, Polycentric Governance in a Complex Society.” In Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited by David Thunder and Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024), pp. 19-39.
"The Polycentric Republic: A Rough Sketch." Chap. 7 of The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025).
“Associational Life and Liberty: A Critical Interpretation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.” In Culture, Secularisation and Democracy: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville. Edited by Hans-Martien ten Napel and Sophie van Bijsterveld (Routledge, 2024), pp. 52-69.
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Cities as Experiments in Freedom
OVERVIEW:
Towns and cities have historically been the social and geographic focal point for markets and political assemblies. Thus, the public norms and expectations associated with interpersonal and intergroup behaviour in a town provide a vivid image of a type of order that transcends the special internal norms and customs of households, businesses, churches, and other groups that make up the fabric of social life.
Towns are natural laboratories for the development of a free way of life, because it is in towns that people paradigmatically engage in close and sustained cooperation with others, and in towns that opportunities for diverse forms of personal and professional flourishing may proliferate. It is no accident that towns and cities tend to become important centres of political and economic life.
The natural emergence of cities as hubs of civil and economic life is intensified in an era of rapid urbanisation. Although towns have, in a manner, been passed out by national states as hubs of political decision-making and power, a case could be made that this is a historical accident and one that need not be definitive.
In light of the relative success and vibrancy of city leagues such as the Hansa and the Swiss Confederation, there is no reason a priori to dismiss the possibility that modern States might be succeeded or rivalled in the future by city leagues or federations of cities. Furthermore, making cities more central to political order holds out the promise of greater civic engagement and enhanced political competition, mobility, and social learning.
In order to theorise and interrogate the possibility of a more city-centric civil order consistent with enhanced personal and corporate freedom, we would need to address questions such as the following:
What can we learn from the historic successes and failures of city leagues such as the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederation?
If we reject the principle of State sovereignty and aim to place the city at the heart of our theory of political authority, then what level of self-determination can we reasonably attribute to a city, while doing justice to its insertion into a wider constitutional, political and economic order?
In what remains a rather State-centric world, how might we envisage the transition from Statism to municipalism? Would such a transition require a major crisis of State power, forcing State officials to cede ever greater autonomy to cities, or could it occur based on a popular democratic movement? Or might it emerge from some city that through a combination of happenstance and design, becoming an influential prototype of the modern city-State?
Assuming self-governing cities would be incorporated into a broader constitution, which issues should such a constitution define as the basic moral minimums of a free multi-city republic?
To what extent must a generalised culture of freedom prevail in order for a multi-city federation to be minimally attractive to a free-spirited citizen?
RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS:
“From Polis to Metropolis: On the Limits of Classical Approaches to Governance in a Fragmented Social
Landscape.” In Disciplines of the City: New Forms of Governance in Today’s Postmetropolises, ed. Julia Urabayen & Jorge León Casero (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2019), pp. 3-31.
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RESEARCH AREAS
Overview
Ingredients of a free and pro-flourishing civil order
Perhaps the most fundamental question of political philosophy is, under which conditions can the customs, norms and institutions that frame citizens' common life underpin a free and flourishing way of life for all?
Much modern political thought points to the institutions and laws of the modern State as a fundamentally important framework for the protection and promotion of personal freedom, but this State-centric focus may blind us to other equally and possible even more important supports for the freedom to flourish.
In imagining a pro-flourishing civil order, we face a number of important questions:
In a society marked by high levels of complexity, social fragmentation, and deep moral and religious difference, how can governments promote peace and public order without being perceived to protect the interests of one group over others?
How can civil governments be empowered to govern society effectively and protect citizens' basic rights without overwhelming the reasonable governmental prerogatives of non-State associations?
If personal and communal flourishing are vitally important ends of a civil order, then how can civil governments play a responsible role in promoting these ends without undermining the freedom of citizens and groups to pursue their own distinctive visions of human flourishing in a way that is informed by local knowledge and experience?
Given the fact that the human good takes many different forms, how can a society's general rules be sufficiently tolerant and capacious to permit a wide variety of different types of social activity and values?
Given the fact that human associations often require a high degree of self-regulation to achieve their ends, how can the potential for local despotism be limited without enabling an even more pervasive sort of governmental despotism?
What sort of legal, institutional and cultural supports are required in order to protect the governmental prerogatives of associations and communities, so that their adherence to wider societal norms does not suppress their distinctive ends and values?
Is it possible to conceptualise and operationalise a coherent if minimal common good for a large society without opening the door to arbitrary forms of paternalism? If so, how might the general common good and its institutional forms differ from local common goods and their institutional forms?
Relevant Publications
The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025)
Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited with Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024)
“An Ethical Case for Bottom-Up, Polycentric Governance in a Complex Society.” In Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited by David Thunder and Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024), pp. 19-39.
“Overcoming the Myth of the Sovereign, Self-Governing People.” In Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community, ed. Trevor Stack & Rose Luminiello. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2022). pp. 125-146.
“Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Grounding and Motivating an Ethos of Social Responsibility in a Free Society.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 4 (December 2009), pp. 559-580
“Why Value Pluralism Does Not Support the State’s Enforcement of Liberal Autonomy: A Response to Crowder.” Political Theory, vol. 37, no. 1 (February 2009), pp. 154-160.
“Associational Life and Liberty: A Critical Interpretation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.” In Culture, Secularisation and Democracy: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville. Edited by Hans-Martien ten Napel and Sophie van Bijsterveld (Routledge, 2024), pp. 52-69.
“Imagining a Post-Sovereign Polity as a Realistic Utopia.” In Rethinking Democracy for Post-Utopian Worlds. Alternative Political Projects After the Sovereign State. Edited by Julia Urabayen and Jorge León Casero (Springer, 2024), pp. 209-222.
“The ‘Neighbourhood as a Pivotal Element of the Infrastructure of a Flourishing Society.” In Happiness and Domestic Life: The Influence of the Home on Subjective and Social Wellbeing (New York: Routledge, 2022). With Ana Cecilia Serrano-Núñez.
Overview
Polycentric & Pluralist Models of Governance & Social Organisation
The past four centuries have seen a steady expansion of the powers and prerogatives of national states, and the progressive entrenchment of a highly State-centric ideology of order, that is, a Statist view of the institutional and social preconditions for an acceptable civil order.
That Statist ideology of order, and its institutional expression, are currently undergoing a severe crisis on multiple fronts: the traditional model of the welfare state is imploding under the strain of an aging population, State policies are inevitably alienating a large portion of ever-more polarised citizenry, and social problems from environmental regulation to healthcare to security are overwhelming the capacities of centralised State bureaucracies.
In this context, there is an urgent need to rethink the dominant State-centric model of governance and policy-making. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom spearheaded an alternative, polycentric approach to social coordination and governance, that privileged local knowledge and multi-lateral cooperation. This approach, in spite of its practical advantages, has not been adequately integrated into normative theories of political and legal order. With this in mind, there are a number of research problems worth investigating:
Besides certain pragmatic advantages of more horizontal forms of social order, such as their capacity to reduce moral and religious polarisation, can a more holistic case be made for more horizontal and polycentric forms of social order from the perspective of rounded human flourishing?
Given the failures of the central State to convincingly meet the challenges of justice and public order, what sort of doctrine of political authority and order could take its place, more friendly to social pluralism and polycentric governance?
What sort of society-wide constitution could provide sufficient protection against governmental and private oppression, while also being supple enough to accommodate a rich and diverse social ecology and the sorts of social experimentation and social mobility without which social learning and progress are greatly impeded?
How can historical and contemporary studies of real-world polycentric orders, such as the Hanseatic League, the Swiss Confederation, and multi-lateral approaches to the distribution of scarce resources, help to shape a normative theory of civil order more receptive to the claims and needs of non-State actors such as municipalities and universities?
Relevant Publications
The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025)
Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited with Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024)
“An Ethical Case for Bottom-Up, Polycentric Governance in a Complex Society.” In Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited by David Thunder and Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024), pp. 19-39.
“Overcoming the Myth of the Sovereign, Self-Governing People.” In Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community, ed. Trevor Stack & Rose Luminiello. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2022). pp. 125-146.
“From Polis to Metropolis: On the Limits of Classical Approaches to Governance in a Fragmented Social Landscape.” In Disciplines of the City: New Forms of Governance in Today’s Postmetropolises, ed. Julia Urabayen & Jorge León Casero (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2019), pp. 3-31.
“Imagining a Post-Sovereign Polity as a Realistic Utopia.” In Rethinking Democracy for Post-Utopian Worlds. Alternative Political Projects After the Sovereign State. Edited by Julia Urabayen and Jorge León Casero (Springer, 2024), pp. 209-222.
Overview
Citizenship and the Pursuit of Human Excellence
Human institutions and roles are morally fallible, no less than the humans who create and maintain them. Consequently, political roles may be an occasion of sin as much as an encouragement to virtue. We are thus confronted with the question: What is the precise contribution of citizenship to an admirable or worthy life? Does it ennoble our lives or devalue them, and if so, how?
This is hardly a new question, but it is one that has generally been sidelined by modern political philosophers, starting with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, under the pretext that politics is all about securing the conditions of public order and justice, not about “making men moral.” The modern, ethically minimalist approach to civic life tends to treat the question of human character and excellence as either incidental to, or instrumental to, the peace and justice of society.
An in-depth investigation of the relation between citizenship and human excellence would engage with questions like the following:
How far should citizens be prepared to engage with institutions that diverge sharply from their ethical ideals, in the interests of "making a difference" or changing the system from within? Under what conditions might it be wiser to defect and undertake a "politics of resistance" or rebuild new and better institutions?
What sorts of civic institutions are more likely to attract the loyalty and participation of citizens in the long run? Under which conditions might local and municipal politics potentially become a training-ground in civic virtue?
What sort of cultural and institutional order is more conducive to the emergence of strong and ethically inspiring forms of leadership, in particular in the political arena?
Given the professionalisation of politics and the plethora of challenges associated with the digital public sphere, from trolling to "deep fakes" to echo-chambers, how might we cultivate a way of life that is more responsive to rational inquiry and deliberation? What sorts of social institutions and communication hubs are most conducive to sincere, intelligent, respectful and informed dialogue about public affairs?
How might we reduce the harm of bad actors in the global digital public sphere, e.g. those who leverage social media dynamics to spread fake news or ruin people's reputations, without conferring a dangerous amount of power on private or public actors to censor views they find inconvenient or threatening?
How can we reduce the dangerous level of power currently held by Big Tech giants and their CEOs over the public sphere, without endangering the principles of a free market economy or replacing the dominance of Big Tech with an overbearing State?
What sorts of strategies might a social media company adopt to promote fruitful and informed dialogue and reduce exposure to trolling, "deep fakes," fake news, etc. without engaging in heavy-handed censorship and shadow-banning, which ends up suppressing reasonable political debate.
Relevant Publications
Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
“A Rawlsian Argument Against the Duty of Civility.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 50, no. 3 (July 2006), pp. 676-690.
“How the Attempt to Cleanse Public Discourse of 'Misinformation' Undermines Science and Rational Inquiry.” Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung (Critical Study of Society), Issue 2 (2023), pp. 175-186.
“Public Discourse Without God? Moral Disposition in Democratic Deliberation.” In Ethics Without God? The Divine in Contemporary Moral and Political Thought, ed. Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, and Jeffrey Langan. St. Augustine Press, 2007, pp. 49-64
Overview
Uses and Abuses of Popular Sovereignty
One of the concepts that has captured the popular imagination and played a central role in the democratic era is that of the "sovereign people" or the people in charge of its own destiny and somehow enthroned over the national State. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the democratisation of social life without some conception of a "people" authorising a government to rule on its behalf.
Yet the narrative of the "sovereign people" authorising a "sovereign State" to rule on its behalf is hard to defend as a literal description of the political process - popular "consent" to government is notoriously hard to prove - and the case can be made that the myth of popular sovereignty actually rationalises and disguises the role of hierarchy and privilege in the constitution of power in "democratic" States.
Nevertheless, the idea of a people exerting power over its collective affairs remains powerful and compelling. So it is worth investigating not only how the idea of "the people" has served to prop up oligarchic power, but also, how the idea of popular sovereignty might be somehow rehabilitated or made less susceptible to self-serving interpretations by the powerful. Here are some questions worth exploring in this regard:
Is there a way to conserve the idea of collective self-government without enthroning "the people" as the ultimate source of social authority? In other words, is it possible to conceptualise a "people" as exerting rightful power over its own destiny while reserving for it a limited jurisdiction consistent with a wide range of rival social authorities?
Given that the pathological uses of appeals to "the people," such as those we saw in Nazism or present-day Venezuela, appear to be connected to the modern State and its projects, might there be a way to sever any tight connection between "people" and "State" so that "the people" enhances identity and self-confidence without descending into violent and exclusionary forms of nationalism?
Might the idea of the "people" be re-articulated in a federalist context to allow for a range of diverse local identities and approaches to law and policy? Is there a coherent way to theorise "the people" for a federated political society, such that the society might be conceptualised as "a people of peoples"? Might this facilitate greater social diversity and reduce the prospects of a national identity becoming in instrument of oppression?
Relevant Publications
Rescuing Freedom from the Demos and Its Agents: Rethinking the Idea of the Self-Governing People. Book project in progress.
"The Sovereign State and Its Homogenising Narrative of Order." Chapter 4 of The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025).
“Imagining a Post-Sovereign Polity as a Realistic Utopia.” In Rethinking Democracy for Post-Utopian Worlds. Alternative Political Projects After the Sovereign State. Edited by Julia Urabayen and Jorge León Casero (Springer, 2024), pp. 209-222
“Overcoming the Myth of the Sovereign, Self-Governing People.” In Engaging Authority: Citizenship and Political Community, ed. Trevor Stack & Rose Luminiello. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2022). pp. 125-146.
Overview
Normative Theories of Territorial & Non-Territorial Federalism
Federalism is an approach to social and political cooperation based on voluntary pacts (foedera) between different collectives that have an interest in submitting some dimension of their life to inter-group governance while conserving many fundamental aspects of their internal identity, governance functions, and way of life.
At a moment like the present one, in which the central State is struggling to meet the needs and expectations of an increasingly diverse and morally and culturally fragmented citizenry, federalism offers a promising store of ideas and practices that reflect a more flexible and adapable paradigm of civil order than that of the vertical, hierarchical State.
While a good deal of work has been devoted to the conceptualisation of federal civil orders and strategies they might harness to remain stable and resilient, much less work has been done articulating a full-fledged normative theory of federalism, viz. a theory of federalism informed by an explicit account of a flourishing human life.
No less strikingly, the non-territorial component of federalism, though present in some early modern theories like that of Johannes Althusius, is either absent or muted within modern theories of federalism.
A normative theory of territorial and non-territorial federalism could help fill in these gaps in our understanding of federalism, by addressing the following questions:
Beyond certain familiar pragmatic advantages of federalism, such as its diffusion of social conflict and its capacity to unify diverse communities without imposing upon them an alienating, one-size-fits-all regime, how might a federal order be more supportive than alternative paradigms of order to the human quest to live a worthy and flourishing life?
Given that the principles of federalism are clearly relevant to non-territorial social units like universities and athletic associations, how might a single normative account of a federal civil order do justice to both the territorial and non-territorial dimensions of federalism? For example, if people develop their identity and projects in the context of non-territorial associations, surely these social realities must be protected within a civil order, no less than territorial political units like municipalities?
Under which conditions can a federal constitution protect a reasonable measure of autonomy in its constituent units without succumbing to anarchy as each unit vies for dominance or seeks to derive advantages for itself at the cost of the union? How can a federal system find a stable middle path between excessive centralisation or hierarchy and anarchistic levels of local autonomy?
Relevant Publications
Rescuing Freedom from the Demos and Its Agents: Rethinking the Idea of the Self-Governing People. Book project in progress.
“An Ethical Case for Bottom-Up, Polycentric Governance in a Complex Society.” In Polycentric Governance and the Good Society: A Normative and Philosophical Investigation. Co-edited by David Thunder and Pablo Paniagua (Lexington Books, 2024), pp. 19-39.
"The Polycentric Republic: A Rough Sketch." Chap. 7 of The Polycentric Republic: A Theory of Civil Order for Free and Diverse Societies (Routledge, 2025).
“Associational Life and Liberty: A Critical Interpretation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.” In Culture, Secularisation and Democracy: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville. Edited by Hans-Martien ten Napel and Sophie van Bijsterveld (Routledge, 2024), pp. 52-69.
Overview
Cities as Experiments in Freedom
Towns and cities have historically been the social and geographic focal point for markets and political assemblies. Thus, the public norms and expectations associated with interpersonal and intergroup behaviour in a town provide a vivid image of a type of order that transcends the special internal norms and customs of households, businesses, churches, and other groups that make up the fabric of social life.
Towns are natural laboratories for the development of a free way of life, because it is in towns that people paradigmatically engage in close and sustained cooperation with others, and in towns that opportunities for diverse forms of personal and professional flourishing may proliferate. It is no accident that towns and cities tend to become important centres of political and economic life.
The natural emergence of cities as hubs of civil and economic life is intensified in an era of rapid urbanisation. Although towns have, in a manner, been passed out by national states as hubs of political decision-making and power, a case could be made that this is a historical accident and one that need not be definitive.
In light of the relative success and vibrancy of city leagues such as the Hansa and the Swiss Confederation, there is no reason a priori to dismiss the possibility that modern States might be succeeded or rivalled in the future by city leagues or federations of cities. Furthermore, making cities more central to political order holds out the promise of greater civic engagement and enhanced political competition, mobility, and social learning.
In order to theorise and interrogate the possibility of a more city-centric civil order consistent with enhanced personal and corporate freedom, we would need to address questions such as the following:
What can we learn from the historic successes and failures of city leagues such as the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederation?
If we reject the principle of State sovereignty and aim to place the city at the heart of our theory of political authority, then what level of self-determination can we reasonably attribute to a city, while doing justice to its insertion into a wider constitutional, political and economic order?
In what remains a rather State-centric world, how might we envisage the transition from Statism to municipalism? Would such a transition require a major crisis of State power, forcing State officials to cede ever greater autonomy to cities, or could it occur based on a popular democratic movement? Or might it emerge from some city that through a combination of happenstance and design, becoming an influential prototype of the modern city-State?
Assuming self-governing cities would be incorporated into a broader constitution, which issues should such a constitution define as the basic moral minimums of a free multi-city republic?
To what extent must a generalised culture of freedom prevail in order for a multi-city federation to be minimally attractive to a free-spirited citizen?
Relevant Publications
“From Polis to Metropolis: On the Limits of Classical Approaches to Governance in a Fragmented Social Landscape.” In Disciplines of the City: New Forms of Governance in Today’s Postmetropolises, ed. Julia Urabayen & Jorge León Casero (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2019), pp. 3-31.
David Thunder
Permanent Researcher & Lecturer
Institute for Culture & Society
University of Navarra
Pamplona, Spain
For my complete webpage, with downloadable publications, op eds, and videos, view davidthunder.com on your desktop computer.