Good Government in a Global Age

Abstract

This book has challenged the neo-liberal conception of good government and argued that more attention needs to be paid to ways we enact and defend individual liberty within the context of economic globalisation. I have also argued that the liberal alternatives to neo-liberal governance do not articulate strategies that are capable of moderating the social and political problems associated with economic globalisation or promote widespread effective liberty in this context. However, the preceding chapter advocated an approach to governing that provided the rationale to meliorate the inequality and social vulnerability stemming from economic globalisation. It demonstrated that this vulnerability and insecurity is a concern for republicanism and outlined a strategy of governance that seeks to regulate global capitalism in order to promote non-domination. Ultimately, republicans “will be politically more optimistic and socially more radical” than liberals because “they do not view state action, provided it is properly constituted, as an inherent affront to liberty: as itself domination”, while being more radical about the nature of social ills because of the belief that vulnerable people are easily dominated by others if left unaided (Pettit 1999a: 148).