Week 10: Civic Republicanism, Secularism, Fundamentalism

A Civic Republican Society? France

Diner en Blanc, Paris (Radio France Internationale; fair use)

The American Version of Civic Republicanism, as Portrayed by an Enemy, 1856

Presidential Candidate John C. Fremont and Supporters (Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge)

Week 10. (1) Civic Republicanism: Liberalism's Uneasy Comrade-in-Arms and Multiculturalism's Contrary? (2) Secularism. (3) Religious

Fundamentalism: An Anti-modern Ideology?

Cecile Laborde, “Republicanism,” Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies,ed Michael Freeden and Marc Stears (Oxford UP,

2013): 513-536

Rajeev Bhargava, "Political Secularism," Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, ed. John Dryzek et al (Oxford UP, 2006): 636-655. Pre-print here: read pp. 1-16, 22-24 ONLY

Andrew Heywood, "Religious Fundamentalism," Political Ideologies, READ pp. 281-293 ONLY

Civic republican political parties

French establishment parties (Socialist Party of France, The Republicans), Fianna Fail (Ireland), Sinn Fein (Irish Republican party of Northern Ireland and the Republic)

So you'd like to see arguments that the United States was not at the founding and throughout the 19th century a liberal polity, but rather civic republican...

Check out Michael Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America In Search of a Public Philosophy (chs. 5-7); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967);

or Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969)

So you'd like to see debates in France over how to apply civic republicanism in response to religious terrorism...

Check out the debate over the government's plan to strip dual-national citizens convicted of terrorism of their French citizenship.