From toleration to net neutrality: private threats to expressive freedom
This project considers non-state (i.e., “private”) threats to liberty as a central problem in the history and theory of expressive freedoms (free speech, freedom of thought, religious toleration…). It challenges the idea that these freedoms are merely negative rights against state interference.
First, it explores how early modern canonical thinkers saw private power —churches, feudal lords, trade monopolies… —as a danger to expressive and intellectual freedoms. Second, it argues that addressing contemporary challenges concerning mass communication, such as media and telecom infrastructure monopolies or powerful digital platforms, aligns with these early modern arguments.
In short, „From toleration to net neutrality“ looks for the normative foundations of contemporary media policy in historical sources too often dismissed or celebrated as merely „libertarian“ — and therefore ostensibly uninteresting to deal with free speech problems other than the state censorship. Outputs include a multilingual outreach article, a scientific article, and a book proposal.
Main Research Topics
- Freedom of Expression
- Media Policy
- Republicanism
- Private Power
- Intellectual History
Research Results
„I have gathered evidence and wrote a two book chapters on how early US sociology of communication (c. 1930–1950) argued for the necessity of state regulation of communication. This was built on the view that the traditional Western idea of free speech as a “negative freedom” was obsolete, due to: (1) mass media used by non-democratic agendas (fascism, media owners’ anti-regulation campaigns, exclusion of groups); (2) oligopolization of newspaper markets, reducing press diversity; and (3) techno-economic shifts shaping industrialized communication (advertising-funded media, telegraph monopolies, mass communication in radio and TV).
I have deepened my understanding on how these arguments drew on Progressive-era (c. 1890–1920) social science, history, and law, which argued that modern industrial society had rendered inadequate the liberal notion of civil rights as mere absence of state interference.
These findings are instrumental to understanding how the early optimism about digitalization and the internet (c. 1990–2000) turned upside down a 20th-century scientific consensus: because online communication was framed as a return to a preindustrial abundance of speech opportunities, to an egalitarian competition between individual speakers without barriers of entry… the argument was that a purely libertarian, negative conception of free speech could be again vindicated; and that consequently all state interference with communication was unecessary.“
- Two-year postdoc to keep working on my own project at Univeritat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Juan de la Cierva fellowship).
- Invitation by publisher to edit a Routledge volume, tentatively titled „The Routledge History of Free Speech in Modern Western Societies (1800-1960)“.
- I am coordinator of a panel that shares my project results in conference „In and out of the canon“ (Helsinki, December 2025)
- I was awarded two major political theory research prizes (Sir Ernst Barker, PSA; Leo Strauss, APSA)
- I have finished a book proposal and about 40,000 words of the manuscript (more than half of the book).
- Guerrero, D., forthcoming, “John Locke and the narratives of religious toleration: libertarian natural rights or republican prudence?”, in M. Belissa, S. Lavinne and Y. Bosc (eds.), Natural Rights and Politics in Early Modern Europe, Palgrave Macmillan.
Curriculum Vitae
- 2023-2025. Substitute lecturer. Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media, Universitat de Barcelona.
- 2021-currently. Co-director of postgraduate diploma „Analysis of Contemporary Capitalism“ (16 ECTS), Universitat de Barcelona
- 2019-2024 PhD candidate (Sociology and Philosophy), Universitat de Barcelona and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Publications and Presentations
- Guerrero, D. (2024). “You are a bad boy to keep sending me pretty books”: Harold Laski, Justice Holmes, and the origins of free speech as a “marketplace of ideas.” Intellectual History Review. OnlineFirst.
- Guerrero, D. (2024). Structural domination, neorepublicanism and the return of liberal state overreach. Journal of Political Power, 17(2), 188-207.
- Guerrero, D. (2024). Contracultura y economía política de la comunicación. Res Publica. Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas, 27(2), 133-143.
- Guerrero, D., & Pérez-Fernández, A. (2024). Rosa Luxemburg as a Republican Agitator: Shaping Social Democracy in Imperial Germany. In F. Jacob (Ed.), Rosa Luxemburg: Periphery and Perception (pp. 207-239). Büchner.
- Guerrero, D., & Martínez-Cava, J. (2022). Between tyranny and self-interest: Why neorepublicanism disregards natural rights. Theoria. A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 69(171), 140-171.
