Power and Control: Stalking as Neo-Republican Domination

Abstract How should we respond to the stalker who claims he is just taking the bus or going to the shops and not doing anything wrong? The philosophical literature contains only two attempts to explain what is morally wrong with stalking. Elizabeth Brake’s recent account proposes that stalking is wrong because it forces a personal relationship on the target. This paper argues that stalking does not constitute a personal relationship in the required sense. I then offer a new account based on the power imbalance between target and stalker. This is best unpacked, I argue, as a relationship of neo-republican domination. The stalker subjects the target to an inappropriate excess of attention and thereby gains the capacity to control her choices by diverting her mental resources. I aim for this account to capture the essence of stalking as a crime of power and control, and illuminate a shared phenomenology in cases of stalking which might initially seem very different.