 Beginning with Skinner (1984), Sunstein (1988), and Pettit (1989), an alternative interpretation of the tradition began to emerge. Undoubtedly, the classical republicans were committed to the importance of active political participation, civic virtue, combating corruption, and so forth. But rather than viewing these as intrinsically valuable components of a particular vision of the good life, these authors argued, they should instead be viewed as instrumentally useful tools for securing and preserving political liberty, understood as independence from arbitrary rule. Republicanism, on this view, has its roots not in an Aristotelian vision of the ancient Greek polis, but rather in Roman jurisprudence with its fundamental and categorical distinction between free men and citizens on the one hand, and dependent slaves on the other. This instrumental or ‘neo-Roman’ interpretation of the tradition was cemented in major contributions by Spitz (1995), Pettit (1997), Dagger (1997), and Skinner (1998).