Europe is experiencing rapidly accelerating poverty and social exclusion, following half a decade of financial crisis and austerity politics. The key problem behind Europe's malaise, in our view, is the economic disenfranchisement of large parts of its population in the winner-takes-all-society. This paper proposes that we examine the contribution of republican political theory as a distinctive approach that provides us with the conceptual and normative resources to reclaim what we call the political economy of democracy, the constellation of political and economic institutions aimed at promoting broad economic sovereignty and individuals' capacities to govern their own lives. In this paper we identify three key ideas that together constitute a distinctively republican approach to political economy: establish an economic floor, impose an economic ceiling to counter excess economic inequality, and democratize the governance and regulation of the main economic institutions.Keywords: republicanism, domination, freedom, economic governance, inequality, basic income Europe is in turmoil. A little more than half a decade of global financial crisis and a deep economic slump has seen large swaths of European citizens facing dire economic 2 2 uncertainty and social exclusion. Austerity politics, an unimaginative knee-jerk response, continues to push already disadvantaged citizens across Europe into precariousness of a sort not seen since the 1930s. The brunt of the crisis is largely borne by those who are already struggling, with those at the top (the much maligned One Percenters) facing little or no adverse effects (Duménil and Lévy, 2013;Sayer, 2014).The resulting dramatic rise in inequality of economic opportunities, income and wealth is deeply problematic, morally and politically.Proposals to keep economic precariousness and inequality in check, let alone reverse it (e.g., Piketty, 2014), rapidly find themselves gridlocked by a political and economic elite that has committed itself to riding out austerity policies at all cost for ideological rather than persuasive economic reasons (Stiglitz, 2010;Krugman, 2013). iii This makes it an appealing starting point for examining the economic conditions of democratic governance.The aim of our paper is to build on the work of the republican political theorists mentioned above by reconsidering the foundations of economic independence as a condition for freedom from domination and economic sovereignty. We begin in the next section to briefly outline the political theory of republicanism, as we understand it.Republicanism of course contains a variety of different ideas, and not all claims are endorsed by all who self-identify as republicans. Nevertheless, we hope our outline will sufficiently appeal to those who share our republican intuitions and concerns to form a basis upon which to build the next sections. The bulk of the paper examines three key ideas that together constitute the republican political economy of democracy. First, republican political economy must se...

No abstract

This chapter focuses on contemporary social movements in Europe and Latin America that are taking shape as forms of action that aim not only at defending some achievements of ‘reformed capitalism’ but also at exploring the possibility of forms of social and economic organisation that go beyond purely capitalist logics. More specifically, it examines the efforts of these movements as they try to regain control over production and distribution. The chapter first considers the meaning of the post-World War II ‘social deal’ as well as the actors, historical trajectories and societal self-understandings that contributed to its emergence. It then explains why, both in Europe and North America and in Latin America, the guarantee of degrees of socio-economic security went hand in hand with a decrease of collective economic sovereignty. It also analyses the effects of the neo-liberal turn on the working populations' socio-economic security and on the social deal.

Este artículo analiza en cuatro tiempos el potencial del acceso incondicional a recursos en la conformación de relaciones (re)productivas libres. En primer lugar, defiende una noción de democracia (económica) que exige la presencia de recursos incondicionalmente predistribuidos. En segundo lugar, explora el vínculo entre predistribución y poder de negociación. En tercer lugar, presenta el derecho a la existencia como condición para una cooperación social efectiva que merezca la pena ser cuidada. En cuarto lugar, discute el papel de la renta básica en procesos de nacionalización de la vida económica entendidos como expresión de la voluntad democrática de la ciudadanía. This article analyses in four stages the potential of unconditional access to resources in the conformation of free (re)productive relations. Firstly, it defends a notion of (economic) democracy requiring the presence of unconditionally predistributed resources. Secondly, it explores the link between predistribution and bargaining power. Thirdly, it presents the right to existence as a condition for an effective social cooperation worth taking care of. Fourthly, it discusses the role of basic income in processes of nationalisation of economic life understood as the expression of the democratic will of citizenry.

RESUMEN. Sin independencia socioeconómica no hay libertad. Las grandes desigualdades generan inmensas desproporciones de poder. Las grandes asimetrías de poder que existen en nuestras sociedades dan lugar a un problema de falta de libertad real para una gran parte de la población. Esta parte de la población, nada insignificante desde el punto de vista numérico, no tiene garantizada la existencia ciudadana puesto que carece de libertad como no-dominación. La Renta Básica de ciudadanía constituye un instrumento capaz de hacer real el derecho de existencia de toda la población a través, entre otros medios, de un aumento del poder de negociación de los pobres y de los dominados.ABSTRACT. Freedom becomes impossible without individuáis' socioeconomic independence. The great inequalities genérate enormous disparities of power. The great asymmetries of power characteristic of current societies give rise to a lack of real freedom that affects most of the population. This portion of the population, which is far from being insigniñcant from a numerical point of view, has no guarantee of its citizen existence since it lacks freedom as non-domination. Basic Income constitutes a valuable mechanism for making the right to existence of the whole population a reality, since it would increase the power of negotiation of poor and dominated people. * Este texto ha sido elaborado en el marco del proyecto de investigación BFF2002-04394-C02-01, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología y el FEDER,