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Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central concept in history and political thought and one of the most important features of democratic societies.[1] Political freedom has been described as freedom from oppression[2] or coercion,[3] the absence of disabling conditions for an individual and the fulfillment of enabling conditions,[4] or the absence of life conditions of compulsion, e.g. economic compulsion, in a society.[5] Although political freedom is often interpreted negatively as the freedom from unreasonable external constraints on action,[6] it can also refer to the positive exercise of rights, capacities and possibilities for action and the exercise of social or group rights.[7] The concept can also include freedom from internal constraints on political action or speech (e.g. social conformity, consistency, or inauthentic behaviour).[8] The concept of political freedom is closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights, which in democratic societies are usually afforded legal protection from the state.
- ^ Hannah Arendt, "What is Freedom?", Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, (New York: Penguin, 1993).
- ^ Iris Marion Young, "Five Faces of Oppression", Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University press, 1990), 39–65.
- ^ Michael Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).
- ^ Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Anchor Books, 2000).
- ^ Karl Marx, "Alienated Labour" in Early Writings.
- ^ Isaiah Berlin, Liberty (Oxford 2004).
- ^ Charles Taylor, "What's Wrong With Negative Liberty?", Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge, 1985), 211–229.
- ^ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance Archived 2011-03-23 at the Wayback Machine"; Nikolas Kompridis, "Struggling Over the Meaning of Recognition: A Matter of Identity, Justice or Freedom?" in European Journal of Political Theory July 2007 vol. 6 no. 3 pp. 277–289.