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Erik J. Olsen, Civic Republicanism and the Properties of Democracy: A Case Study of Post-Socialist Political Theory.

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Erik J. Olsen, Civic Republicanism and the Properties of Democracy: A Case Study of Post-Socialist Political Theory (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006), x + 325 pp.

The jumping-off point in Erik J. Olsen's engaging book is the thought that within theoretical discussions of democracy, civic virtue has moved from the periphery to the center just as property has gone in the opposite direction (1). Olsen attributes this shift in large part to two different, but yet related, developments within contemporary political philosophy. The first is the development of a post-socialist political theory in the wake of the failure of socialism as a serious political option. As Gerald Gaus has pointed out, as comprehensive centralized economic planning has waned, markets based, at least in part, on private property have been embraced by virtually every modern political system today. (1) The second development, and the one that concerns Olsen the most, is the rise of civic republicanism as the main rival to modern materialism and its liberal supporters. In particular, what concerns Olsen is that the popularity and staying power of the so-called "republican revival" in political theory means that it is the most prevalent, and perhaps the most powerful, example of post-socialist political thought. What bothers Olsen, and is the main focus of the book, is that while civic republicans can more or less safely make these types of claims, in their articulation of a public philosophy to rival liberalism, they have somehow forgotten to focus on property issues. In exploring this omission, Olsen seeks to critique (mostly sympathetically) civic republicanism and put forward his own correction in the form of what he calls a "democratic theory of property."

By looking at the civic republican project of civic recovery and renewal, Olsen hopes to illuminate several important background conditions and understandings through which democratic practices are sustained. In doing so, the author hopes to examine the "properties of democracy" pertaining to property itself by outlining "a democratic theory of property around the relationship between property's placeness and its thingness" (11). What is at stake here for Olsen is that while civic republicans have found themselves as the main theoretical challengers to modern liberalism and its focus on materialism, they have neglected to connect their focus on civic virtue and community to any kind of contemporary theory of property. By way of correction, Olsen argues that civic republicans need to connect the centrality of civic virtue to the realities of property by carving out a sphere of property, which he calls the "civic infrastructure," a zone that transcends the traditional boundaries of the public and private.

Civic republicans as post-socialists

According to Olsen, the recent republican turn in political theory was born of a kind of post-socialist disenchantment with the materialistic surge of modern, Enlightenment liberalism. Through the work of writers such as Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Ronald Beiner, among others, civic republicans articulated a powerful critique...

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