{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.028584392014519056, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0027223230490018148, 'mean_word_length': 5.10803324099723, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: Leif Christian Jensen and Geir Hønneland (eds), Handbook of the Politics of the Arctic

Liberty through Political Representation (Cambridge University Press, 2014), where the theoretical argument is developed in full. The theoretical basis of the book is made up of the triad of freedom, power and representation. By freedom, Hamilton understands neither liberal negative freedom (which is insufficient) nor republican freedom understood as a way of life based on political participation (which is unrealistic). By freedom, he understands power conceived as the real capacity to formulate goals and pursue them: ‘a combination of my ability to determine what I will do and my power to do it or bring it about’ (p. 21). Representation is essential because, in modern complex societies, individual freedom is intrinsically linked to group freedom and to (economic, social and political) institutions – hence representation. This is the crux of the argument for freedom as power through representation. South Africans, then, are not free because, along one or more dimensions, they do not hold power. The majority of the population is poor and has been marginalised vis-à-vis the political representative system as well as the economic system. Even rich South Africans cannot be said to be free. Freedom is relational, Hamilton argues, and my freedom depends on the freedom of others. Concretely, the very fact that rich South Africans are forced to live in comfortable, but walled, compounds shows their lack of freedom. Hamilton’s solution is radical redistribution of wealth and radical reform of the political system, including the constitution. The alternative is the prospect of revolutionary upheaval. Hamilton is a political theorist, but he has written an accessible book for non-theorists. The book will be of interest to scholars working on South Africa or on constitutional reform and redistributive policy, among other things. Hamilton is a political theorist who engages with a wide variety of theorists, both historical and contemporary. He draws on analytic and liberal theory as well as on Continental traditions; in straddling different traditions, this work is exemplary too.