Rethinking Non‐Domination: A Relational Perspective on Neo‐Republicanism

ABSTRACT Neo‐republican political theory has revived the classical republican ideal of freedom as non‐domination, offering a powerful alternative to liberal accounts centred on non‐interference. At the same time, feminist theories of relational autonomy have emphasised that agency and autonomy are constituted through social relations of dependence, recognition and care. Despite important affinities, sustained engagement between these two traditions remains limited. This article revisits the relationship between neo‐republican freedom and relational feminist theory. It argues that dominant neo‐republican formulations, particularly in the work of Philip Pettit, conceptualise domination primarily in interactional terms, focusing on relations of discretionary interference between agents. While this framework captures certain paradigmatic forms of domination, it struggles to account for structural and constitutive dimensions of unfreedom emphasised by feminist theory. Building on insights developed by feminist philosophers on vulnerability, the article proposes a relational reconstruction of non‐domination. This reconstruction does not displace the republican framework's core commitments—its institutional orientation, its contestability norm and its unified criterion linking freedom and democratic legitimacy—but provides them with more adequate foundations. In doing so, it operates at a different and complementary level of analysis to feminist political theories of justice, supplying the normative‐political grammar within which relational and structural critique can be institutionally articulated and contested.