This chapter explores two kinds of vulnerability which appear to cause a problem for neo-republicanism as a form of relational egalitarianism: the vulnerabilities involved in intimate and caring relationships, and those generated by complex economic and social processes like the global financial system. I argue that the standard neo-republican strategy of constraining arbitrary power can successfully account for the former; the value of the vulnerabilities involved in intimate relations depends on the presence of constraints which prevent power being exercised in ways which do not track relevant interests. But this approach is less successful in dealing with the latter kind of vulnerability, which generates cases in which agents can be subject to domination without suffering the loss of status, and accompanying inequality, usually characteristic of domination. I argue that while these cases count as exceptions to the standard relationship between non-domination and egalitarianism, neo-republicanism remains a form of relational egalitarianism.

Remote working – strongly widespread during the covid-19 pandemic –is today one of the main forms of innovation in the world of work. As always, within innovation phenomena we have static elements, from the past, and dynamic elements, looking to change the status quo. Consequently, the evaluation of remote work may be either conservative or innovative. Remote work can be considered as a simple re-proposition of the Fordist-Taylorist Enterprise that does not actually change the characteristics of employment as a not democratic relationship involving the worker submission to the employer managerial, control and disciplinary power. On the other hand, remote work can be recognized as the symptom of a broader cultural, organizational and process change in the firm, allowing the worker to conquer new spaces of freedom and autonomy, which not only allow for a new balance in the relationship between work and life, but also redefine both the factual and juridical connotations of subordination. This chapter analyzes this second perspective and, on the basis of legislation and collective bargaining, tries to define the elements of change in the concept and morphology of subordination within the employment relationship.

The introduction begins with the crisis of republicanism in France today. It asks what republicanism is for the French and why exclusion lies at the center of its crisis. It then presents the characteristics of French republicanism (in particular, its universalism and its emancipatory dimension), its place in the broader republican tradition, and in the neo-republican revival. Finally, it introduces the theoretical paradoxes that led republicans to justify exclusionary practices despite their endorsement of emancipation.

This chapter develops a theory of domination, one that helps discern the normative potential of welfare institutions for democratic social movements. It critically appraises three existing approaches to domination: neo-republican approaches that focus on direct domination, neo-Kantian approaches that focus on structural domination, and post-structuralist approaches that focus on abstract domination. In each case, the chapter shows that the distinctive understanding of domination produces a different picture of the welfare state-both in terms of how we should understand the functioning of welfare institutions as well as how such institutions can overcome or reinforce structures of domination. The chapter argues that domination exists in three worlds-the objective, the intersubjective, and the subjective – each corresponding to a different "face" of power. Advocates of these three perspectives fail to recognize these distinctive levels of analysis or worlds and so overgeneralize from one level of analysis. These three theories, then, offer important insights into the nature of domination – but they are only the building blocks of a theory of democracy, domination, and the welfare state.