Republican Auctoritas: Harrington's dual theory of political legitimacy

Neo-republicans position James Harrington (1611-1677) as a seminal figure in a tradition that asks what set of institutions grant the individual freedom from domination. This article argues that the signal emphasis on freedom diverts us from the broader question of legitimacy motivating Harrington's republicanism. Harrington contends that the liberty property confers is a necessary but insufficient condition for de jure government. The popular liberty that a broad distribution of wealth secures must be supplemented by a Roman concept of authority in order for the regime to become legitimate. Republican legitimacy requires the marriage of popular power and aristocratic virtue; it demands both the wide distribution of property and the integration of authority as auctoritas into the political constitution. The elucidation of Harrington's dual theory of legitimacy makes it possible to reassess the distance separating a republicanism that follows Harrington from a liberalism that follows Hobbes.