This chapter introduces the conceptual claim of this book that the idea of a competition-democracy nexus is grounded in a normative commitment to a republican conception of economic liberty as non-domination originating in ancient Roman thought. The chapter first shows how the existing ‘special interest capture’ and ‘conventional liberty’ accounts fail to make sense of the competition–democracy nexus. It then explores the republican conception of liberty as non-domination as an alternative explanation of the idea of a competition–democracy nexus. It shows that this republican understanding of economic liberty is the only explanatory variable that can explain why competition enhances and the concentration of economic power undermines democracy and why competition law is the right tool to address this problem.

This chapter analyses how the ideal of republican liberty and the concept of a competition–democracy nexus have been implemented through concrete competition policy. To this end, the chapter looks at the interpretation and application of the three substantive pillars (i.e., the prohibition of anticompetitive agreements, the regulation of monopoly power, and the control of mergers) of competition law in the US until the 1970s and in the EU until the early 2000s. It describes how all three branches of competition law were interpreted in accordance with a republican conception of economic liberty as non-domination that perceived the very existence of concentrated economic power as an obstacle to economic freedom and democracy. This republican concern about liberty as non-domination as the central element of the competition–democracy nexus primarily manifested itself in the overarching policy goal of preserving a polycentric market structure as an institution of antipower. The republican antitrust tradition in the United States and in Europe built upon the structuralist approaches envisaged by various republican antitrust paradigms to operationalise the idea of a competition–democracy nexus that we discussed in the previous chapter.

Beginning after the end of Reconstruction, this chapter looks at the ways in which the police power emerged to facilitate an increasingly bold project of regulation. Key Supreme Court decisions supported the use of the police power to undertake and implement the objectives of a growing economy and a widening sphere of government. State power accompanied expanding national power and all levels of government tackled myriad persistent and new problems. In a case from the early twentieth century, for example, the Court upheld a vaccine requirement as a reasonable exercise of the public health authority of the state. Regulatory power was called into question by the Supreme Court’s Lochner-era decisions, but even this two-decades-long movement did not seriously threaten the ability of state governments to carry out ambitious regulatory agendas. Significantly, the Court put its imprimatur on the government’s zoning power in key cases from the late 1920s. And though the Court would message to the states that there were limits on how far they could go in restricting property rights, through doctrines such as “regulatory takings,” what emerged by the end of World War II was a robust conception of the state police power, one that gave government a wide sphere of action and authority to protect the general welfare.