Article Republicanism and the political economy of democracy David Casassas Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Jurgen De Wispelaere McGill University, Montreal, Canada Abstract 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 article 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 eco- nomic sovereignty and individuals’ capacities to govern their own lives. This article identifies three key ideas that together constitute a distinctively republican approach to political economy: (1) establish an economic floor; (2) impose an economic ceiling to counter excess economic inequality; and (3) democratize the governance and regulation of the main economic institutions. Keywords basic income, domination, economic governance, freedom, inequality, republicanism Europe is in turmoil. A little more than half a decade of global financial crisis and a deep economic slump have seen large sectors of European citizens facing dire economic uncertainty and social exclusion. Austerity politics, an unimaginative knee-jerk Corresponding author: David Casassas, Department of Sociological Theory, Philosophy of Law and Methodology of Social Sciences, Universitat de Barcelona, Avgda. Diagonal 690, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Email: dcasassas@ub.edu European Journal of Social Theory 2016, Vol. 19(2) 283–300 ª The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1368431015600026 est.sagepub.com by guest on April 22, 2016 est.sagepub.com Downloaded from