The claim that workers are subject to structural domination in the labor market is a central contention of the recent radical turn in republican political theory, but it remains undertheorized. Two core components—the claim that workers have “no reasonable alternative” to selling their labor to capitalists and the relevance of exposure to potential interference in such cases—remain unclear. Without a more precise specification of the conditions of structural domination, it is difficult to assess how well republican prescriptions minimize it. I develop a revised defense of the central claim through an analysis of these components. I clarify what it is to have reasonable alternatives in the labor market but show that holding such options is insufficient to avoid structural domination. I argue that the dependence at the heart of structural domination can be constituted multifariously and develop an additional criterion directed at capturing such dependence in production.

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Political parties have been the subject of a recent resurgent interest among political philosophers, with prominent contributions spanning liberal to socialist literatures arguing for a more positive appraisal of the role of parties in the operation of democratic representation and public deliberation. In this paper, I argue for a similar re-evaluation of the role of political parties within contemporary republicanism. Contemporary republicanism displays a wariness of political parties. In Philip Pettit's paradigmatic account of republican democracy, rare mentions of political parties often stress their tendency to lead to factionalism or corruption. Others working in the republican tradition such as Richard Bellamy and Ian Shapiro provide more extended discussion of the role of parties, but limit their theoretical function to enabling electoral competition. I argue that political parties play a far more significant role in promoting non-domination than this. In addition to enabling electoral competition, I show that political parties are also essential to the effective operation of two other components of republican democracy: contestation and interest-formation. I further argue that understanding political parties in these terms is compatible with republican democracy more generally, addressing the worry that parties will produce factional rather than common-good oriented public decisions.

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