From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A republic (from Latin res publica 'public affair') is a form of government in which "supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives". In republics, the country is considered a "public matter", not the private concern or property of the rulers. The primary positions of power within a republic are attained through democracy or a mix of democracy with oligarchy or autocracy rather than being unalterably occupied by any given family lineage or group. With modern republicanism, it has become the opposing form of government to a monarchy and therefore a modern republic has no monarch as head of state.
As of 2017, 159 of the world's 206 sovereign states
use the word "republic" as part of their official names. Not all of
these are republics in the sense of having elected governments, nor is
the word "republic" used in the names of all states with elected
governments.
The word republic comes from the Latin term res publica,
which literally means "public thing", "public matter", or "public
affair" and was used to refer to the state as a whole. The term
developed its modern meaning in reference to the constitution of the
ancient Roman Republic, lasting from the overthrow of the kings in 509 BCE to the establishment of the Empire in 27 BCE. This constitution was characterized by a Senate composed of wealthy aristocrats wielding significant influence; several popular assemblies of all free citizens, possessing the power to elect magistrates and pass laws; and a series of magistracies with varying types of civil and political authority.
Most often a republic is a single sovereign state,
but there are also sub-sovereign state entities that are referred to as
republics, or that have governments that are described as republican in
nature. For instance, the United States Constitution "guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government". Another example was the Soviet Union, described by its undemocratic and extremely centralised government as being a federation of voluntarily united "Soviet socialist republics" with equal rights and ostensibly high degree of internal autonomy. The Russian Federation is similarly a state that is composed partly of several "republics".
Etymology
The term originates from the Latin translation of Greek word politeia. Cicero, among other Latin writers, translated politeia as res publica and it was in turn translated by Renaissance scholars as "republic" (or similar terms in various western European languages).
The term politeia can be translated as form of government,
polity, or regime and is therefore not always a word for a specific
type of regime as the modern word republic is. One of Plato's major works on political science was titled Politeia and in English it is thus known as The Republic. However, apart from the title, in modern translations of The Republic, alternative translations of politeia are also used.
However, in Book III of his Politics, Aristotle was apparently the first classical writer to state that the term politeia can be used to refer more specifically to one type of politeia: "When the citizens at large govern for the public good, it is called by the name common to all governments (to koinon onoma pasōn tōn politeiōn), government (politeia)".
Also amongst classical Latin, the term "republic" can be used in a
general way to refer to any regime, or in a specific way to refer to
governments which work for the public good.
In medieval Northern Italy, a number of city states had commune or signoria based governments. In the late Middle Ages, writers such as Giovanni Villani began writing about the nature of these states and the differences from other types of regime. They used terms such as libertas populi, a free people, to describe the states. The terminology changed in the 15th century as the renewed interest in the writings of Ancient Rome caused writers to prefer using classical terminology. To describe non-monarchical states, writers (most importantly, Leonardo Bruni) adopted the Latin phrase res publica.
While Bruni and Machiavelli used the term to describe the states of Northern Italy, which were not monarchies, the term res publica has a set of interrelated meanings in the original Latin. The term can quite literally be translated as "public matter". It was most often used by Roman writers to refer to the state and government, even during the period of the Roman Empire.
In subsequent centuries, the English word "commonwealth" came to be used as a translation of res publica, and its use in English was comparable to how the Romans used the term res publica. Notably, during The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell the word commonwealth was the most common term to call the new monarchless state, but the word republic was also in common use. Likewise, in Polish the term was translated as rzeczpospolita, although the translation is now only used with respect to Poland.
Presently, the term "republic" commonly means a system of
government which derives its power from the people rather than from
another basis, such as heredity or divine right.
History
While the philosophical terminology developed in classical Greece and Rome, as already noted by Aristotle there was already a long history of city states with a wide variety of constitutions, not only in Greece but also in the Middle East. After the classical period, during the Middle Ages, many free cities developed again, such as Venice.
Classical republics
The modern type of "republic" itself is different from any type of state found in the classical world. Nevertheless, there are a number of states of the classical era that are today still called republics. This includes ancient Athens and the Roman Republic.
While the structure and governance of these states was different from
that of any modern republic, there is debate about the extent to which
classical, medieval, and modern republics form a historical continuum. J. G. A. Pocock has argued that a distinct republican tradition stretches from the classical world to the present. Other scholars disagree.
Paul Rahe, for instance, argues that the classical republics had a form
of government with few links to those in any modern country.
The political philosophy of the classical republics has
influenced republican thought throughout the subsequent centuries.
Philosophers and politicians advocating republics, such as Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Adams, and Madison, relied heavily on classical Greek and Roman sources which described various types of regimes.
Aristotle's Politics discusses various forms of government. One form Aristotle named politeia, which consisted of a mixture of the other forms. He argued that this was one of the ideal forms of government. Polybius expanded on many of these ideas, again focusing on the idea of mixed government. The most important Roman work in this tradition is Cicero's De re publica.
Over time, the classical republics became empires or were conquered by empires. Most of the Greek republics were annexed to the Macedonian Empire of Alexander.
The Roman Republic expanded dramatically conquering the other states of
the Mediterranean that could be considered republics, such as Carthage. The Roman Republic itself then became the Roman Empire.
Other ancient republics
The
term "republic" is not commonly used to refer to pre-classical
city-states, especially if outside Europe and the area which was under
Graeco-Roman influence. However some early states outside Europe had governments that are sometimes today considered similar to republics.
In the ancient Near East, a number of cities of the Eastern Mediterranean achieved collective rule. Republic city-states flourished in Phoenicia along the Levantine coast starting from the 11th century BCE. In ancient Phoenicia, the concept of Shophet was very similar to a Roman consul. Under Persian rule (539–332 BCE), Phoenician city-states such as Tyre abolished the king system and adopted "a system of the suffetes (judges), who remained in power for short mandates of 6 years". Arwad
has been cited as one of the earliest known examples of a republic, in
which the people, rather than a monarch, are described as sovereign. The Israelite confederation of the era of the Judges
before the United Monarchy has also been considered a type of republic. The system of government of the Igbo people in what is now Nigeria has been described as "direct and participatory democracy."
Indian subcontinent
Early republican institutions come from the independent gaṇasaṅghas—gaṇa means "tribe" and saṅgha
means "assembly"—which may have existed as early as the 6th century BCE
and persisted in some areas until the 4th century CE in India. The
evidence for this is scattered, however, and no pure historical source
exists for that period. Diodorus, a Greek historian who wrote two centuries after the time of Alexander the Great's
invasion of India (now Pakistan and northwest India) mentions, without
offering any detail, that independent and democratic states existed in
India. Modern scholars note the word democracy
at the time of the 3rd century BCE and later suffered from degradation
and could mean any autonomous state, no matter how oligarchic in nature.
The
Mahajanapadas
were the sixteen most powerful and vast kingdoms and republics of the
era, there were also a number of smaller kingdoms stretching the length
and breadth of
Ancient India. Among the Mahajanapadas and smaller states, the
Shakyas,
Koliyas,
Mallakas, and
Licchavis followed republican government.
Key characteristics of the gaṇa seem to include a monarch, usually known by the name raja,
and a deliberative assembly. The assembly met regularly. It discussed
all major state decisions. At least in some states, attendance was open
to all free men. This body also had full financial, administrative, and
judicial authority. Other officers, who rarely receive any mention,
obeyed the decisions of the assembly. Elected by the gaṇa, the monarch apparently always belonged to a family of the noble class of Kshatriya Varna. The monarch coordinated his activities with the assembly; in some states, he did so with a council of other nobles. The Licchavis had a primary governing body of 7,077 rajas, the heads of the most important families. On the other hand, the Shakyas, Koliyas, Mallakas, and Licchavis, during the period around Gautama Buddha, had the assembly open to all men, rich and poor. Early "republics" or gaṇasaṅgha, such as Mallakas, centered in the city of Kusinagara, and the Vajjika (or Vṛjika) League, centered in the city of Vaishali, existed as early as the 6th century BCE and persisted in some areas until the 4th century CE. The most famous clan amongst the ruling confederate clans of the Vajji Mahajanapada were the Licchavis.
The Magadha kingdom included republican communities such as the
community of Rajakumara. Villages had their own assemblies under their
local chiefs called Gramakas. Their administrations were divided into
executive, judicial, and military functions.
Scholars differ over how best to describe these governments, and
the vague, sporadic quality of the evidence allows for wide
disagreements. Some emphasize the central role of the assemblies and
thus tout them as democracies; other scholars focus on the upper-class
domination of the leadership and possible control of the assembly and
see an oligarchy or an aristocracy.
Despite the assembly's obvious power, it has not yet been established
whether the composition and participation were truly popular. This is
reflected in the Arthashastra, an ancient handbook for monarchs on how to rule efficiently. It contains a chapter on how to deal with the saṅghas,
which includes injunctions on manipulating the noble leaders, yet it
does not mention how to influence the mass of the citizens, indicating
that the "gaṇasaṅgha" are more of an aristocratic rule, or oligarchic republic, than "democracy".
Icelandic Commonwealth
The Icelandic Commonwealth was established in 930 CE by refugees from Norway who had fled the unification of that country under King Harald Fairhair. The Commonwealth consisted of a number of clans run by chieftains, and the Althing
was a combination of parliament and supreme court where disputes
appealed from lower courts were settled, laws were decided, and
decisions of national importance were taken. One such example was the Christianisation of Iceland
in 1000, where the Althing decreed that all Icelanders must be baptized
into Christianity, and forbade celebration of pagan rituals. Contrary
to most states, the Icelandic Commonwealth had no official leader.
In the early 13th century, the Age of the Sturlungs,
the Commonwealth began to suffer from long conflicts between warring
clans. This, combined with pressure from the Norwegian king Haakon IV
for the Icelanders to rejoin the Norwegian "family", led the Icelandic
chieftains to accept Haakon IV as king by the signing of the Gamli sáttmáli ("Old Covenant")
in 1262. This effectively brought the Commonwealth to an end. The
Althing, however, is still Iceland's parliament, almost 800 years later.
Mercantile republics
In Europe new republics appeared in the late Middle Ages when a
number of small states embraced republican systems of government. These
were generally small, but wealthy, trading states, like the
Mediterranean maritime republics and the Hanseatic League, in which the merchant class had risen to prominence. Knud Haakonssen has noted that, by the Renaissance,
Europe was divided with those states controlled by a landed elite being
monarchies and those controlled by a commercial elite being republics.
Italy was the most densely populated area of Europe, and also one
with the weakest central government. Many of the towns thus gained
considerable independence and adopted commune forms of government.
Completely free of feudal control, the Italian city-states expanded,
gaining control of the rural hinterland. The two most powerful were the Republic of Venice and its rival the Republic of Genoa.
Each were large trading ports, and further expanded by using naval
power to control large parts of the Mediterranean. It was in Italy that
an ideology advocating for republics first developed. Writers such as Bartholomew of Lucca, Brunetto Latini, Marsilius of Padua, and Leonardo Bruni saw the medieval city-states as heirs to the legacy of Greece and Rome.
Across Europe a wealthy merchant class developed in the important
trading cities. Despite their wealth they had little power in the feudal system
dominated by the rural land owners, and across Europe began to advocate
for their own privileges and powers. The more centralized states, such
as France and England, granted limited city charters.
In the more loosely governed Holy Roman Empire, 51 of the largest towns became free imperial cities. While still under the dominion of the Holy Roman Emperor most power was held locally and many adopted republican forms of government.
The same rights to imperial immediacy were secured by the major trading
cities of Switzerland. The towns and villages of alpine Switzerland
had, courtesy of geography, also been largely excluded from central
control. Unlike Italy and Germany, much of the rural area was thus not
controlled by feudal barons, but by independent farmers who also used
communal forms of government. When the Habsburgs tried to reassert control over the region both rural farmers and town merchants joined the rebellion. The Swiss were victorious, and the Swiss Confederacy was proclaimed, and Switzerland has retained a republican form of government to the present.
Two Russian cities with a powerful merchant class—Novgorod and Pskov—also
adopted republican forms of government in 12th and 13th centuries,
respectively, which ended when the republics were conquered by Muscovy/Russia at the end of 15th – beginning of 16th century.
The dominant form of government for these early republics was control by a limited council of elite patricians.
In those areas that held elections, property qualifications or guild
membership limited both who could vote and who could run. In many states
no direct elections were held and council members were hereditary or
appointed by the existing council. This left the great majority of the
population without political power, and riots and revolts by the lower
classes were common. The late Middle Ages saw more than 200 such risings
in the towns of the Holy Roman Empire. Similar revolts occurred in Italy, notably the Ciompi Revolt in Florence.
Mercantile republics outside Europe
Following the collapse of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and establishment of the Turkish Anatolian Beyliks, the Ahiler merchant fraternities established a state centered on Ankara that is sometimes compared to the Italian mercantile republics.
Calvinist republics
While the classical writers had been the primary ideological source for the republics of Italy, in Northern Europe, the Protestant Reformation would be used as justification for establishing new republics. Most important was Calvinist theology, which developed in the Swiss Confederacy, one of the largest and most powerful of the medieval republics. John Calvin
did not call for the abolition of monarchy, but he advanced the
doctrine that the faithful had the duty to overthrow irreligious
monarchs. Advocacy for republics appeared in the writings of the Huguenots during the French Wars of Religion.
Calvinism played an important role in the republican revolts in
England and the Netherlands. Like the city-states of Italy and the
Hanseatic League, both were important trading centres, with a large
merchant class prospering from the trade with the New World. Large parts
of the population of both areas also embraced Calvinism. During the Dutch Revolt (beginning in 1566), the Dutch Republic emerged from rejection of Spanish Habsburg
rule. However, the country did not adopt the republican form of
government immediately: in the formal declaration of independence (Act of Abjuration, 1581), the throne of king Philip was only declared vacant, and the Dutch magistrates asked the Duke of Anjou, queen Elizabeth of England and prince William of Orange, one after another, to replace Philip. It took until 1588 before the Estates (the Staten, the representative assembly at the time) decided to vest the sovereignty of the country in themselves.
In 1641 the English Civil War began. Spearheaded by the Puritans and funded by the merchants of London, the revolt was a success, and King Charles I was executed. In England James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, and John Milton became some of the first writers to argue for rejecting monarchy and embracing a republican form of government. The English Commonwealth
was short-lived, and the monarchy was soon restored. The Dutch Republic
continued in name until 1795, but by the mid-18th century the stadtholder had become a de facto monarch. Calvinists were also some of the earliest settlers of the British and Dutch colonies of North America.
Liberal republics
An allegory of the French Republic in Paris
A revolutionary Republican hand-written bill from the Stockholm riots during the
Revolutions of 1848, reading: "Dethrone
Oscar he is not fit to be a king: Long live the Republic! The Reform! down with the Royal house, long live
Aftonbladet! death to the king / Republic Republic the People.
Brunkeberg this evening". The writer's identity is unknown.
Along with these initial republican revolts, early modern Europe also saw a great increase in monarchical power. The era of absolute monarchy
replaced the limited and decentralized monarchies that had existed in
most of the Middle Ages. It also saw a reaction against the total
control of the monarch as a series of writers created the ideology known
as liberalism.
Most of these Enlightenment thinkers were far more interested in ideas of constitutional monarchy than in republics. The Cromwell regime had discredited republicanism, and most thinkers felt that republics ended in either anarchy or tyranny. Thus philosophers like Voltaire opposed absolutism while at the same time being strongly pro-monarchy.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu
praised republics, and looked on the city-states of Greece as a model.
However, both also felt that a state like France, with 20 million
people, would be impossible to govern as a republic. Rousseau admired
the republican experiment in Corsica
(1755–1769) and described his ideal political structure of small,
self-governing communes. Montesquieu felt that a city-state should
ideally be a republic, but maintained that a limited monarchy was better
suited to a state with a larger territory.
The American Revolution began as a rejection only of the authority of the British Parliament
over the colonies, not of the monarchy. The failure of the British
monarch to protect the colonies from what they considered the
infringement of their rights to representative government,
the monarch's branding of those requesting redress as traitors, and his
support for sending combat troops to demonstrate authority resulted in
widespread perception of the British monarchy as tyrannical.
With the United States Declaration of Independence
the leaders of the revolt firmly rejected the monarchy and embraced
republicanism. The leaders of the revolution were well versed in the
writings of the French liberal thinkers, and also in history of the
classical republics. John Adams had notably written a book on republics throughout history. In addition, the widely distributed and popularly read-aloud tract Common Sense, by Thomas Paine, succinctly and eloquently laid out the case for republican ideals and independence to the larger public. The Constitution of the United States, went into effect in 1789, created a relatively strong federal republic to replace the relatively weak confederation under the first attempt at a national government with the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union ratified in 1781. The first ten amendments to the Constitution, called the United States Bill of Rights, guaranteed certain natural rights fundamental to republican ideals that justified the Revolution.
The French Revolution was also not republican at its outset. Only after the Flight to Varennes removed most of the remaining sympathy for the king was a republic declared and Louis XVI sent to the guillotine. The stunning success of France in the French Revolutionary Wars saw republics spread by force of arms across much of Europe as a series of client republics were set up across the continent. The rise of Napoleon saw the end of the French First Republic and her Sister Republics, each replaced by "popular monarchies". Throughout the Napoleonic period, the victors extinguished many of the oldest republics on the continent, including the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, and the Dutch Republic. They were eventually transformed into monarchies or absorbed into neighboring monarchies.
Outside Europe another group of republics was created as the Napoleonic Wars
allowed the states of Latin America to gain their independence. Liberal
ideology had only a limited impact on these new republics. The main
impetus was the local European descended Creole population in conflict with the Peninsulares—governors sent from overseas. The majority of the population in most of Latin America was of either African or Amerindian descent, and the Creole elite had little interest in giving these groups power and broad-based popular sovereignty. Simón Bolívar,
both the main instigator of the revolts and one of its most important
theorists, was sympathetic to liberal ideals but felt that Latin America
lacked the social cohesion for such a system to function and advocated
autocracy as necessary.
In Mexico this autocracy briefly took the form of a monarchy in the First Mexican Empire. Due to the Peninsular War, the Portuguese court was relocated to Brazil in 1808. Brazil gained independence as a monarchy on September 7, 1822, and the Empire of Brazil
lasted until 1889. In many other Latin American states various forms of
autocratic republic existed until most were liberalized at the end of
the 20th century.
The French Second Republic was created in 1848, but abolished by Napoleon III who proclaimed himself Emperor in 1852. The French Third Republic was established in 1870, when a civil revolutionary committee refused to accept Napoleon III's surrender during the Franco-Prussian War. Spain briefly became the First Spanish Republic
in 1873–74, but the monarchy was soon restored. By the start of the
20th century France, Switzerland and San Marino remained the only
republics in Europe. This changed when, after the 1908 Lisbon Regicide, the 5 October 1910 revolution established the Portuguese Republic.
In East Asia, China had seen considerable anti-Qing sentiment
during the 19th century, and a number of protest movements developed
calling for constitutional monarchy. The most important leader of these
efforts was Sun Yat-sen, whose Three Principles of the People combined American, European, and Chinese ideas. Under his leadership the Republic of China was proclaimed on January 1, 1912.
Republicanism expanded significantly in the aftermath of World War I, when several of the largest European empires collapsed: the Russian Empire (1917), German Empire (1918), Austro-Hungarian Empire (1918), and Ottoman Empire (1922) were all replaced by republics. New states gained independence during this turmoil, and many of these, such as Ireland, Poland, Finland and Czechoslovakia, chose republican forms of government. Following Greece's defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22), the monarchy was briefly replaced by the Second Hellenic Republic (1924–35). In 1931, the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–39) resulted in the Spanish Civil War that would be the prelude of World War II.
Republican ideas were spreading, especially in Asia. The United
States began to have considerable influence in East Asia in the later
part of the 19th century, with Protestant
missionaries playing a central role. The liberal and republican writers
of the west also exerted influence. These combined with native Confucian
inspired political philosophy that had long argued that the populace
had the right to reject unjust governments that had lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Two short-lived republics were proclaimed in East Asia, the Republic of Formosa and the First Philippine Republic.
Decolonization
A map of the Commonwealth republics
In the years following World War II,
most of the remaining European colonies gained their independence, and
most became republics. The two largest colonial powers were France and
the United Kingdom. Republican France encouraged the establishment of
republics in its former colonies. The United Kingdom attempted to follow
the model it had for its earlier settler colonies of creating
independent Commonwealth realms still linked under the same monarch. While most of the settler colonies and the smaller states of the Caribbean retained this system, it was rejected by the newly independent countries in Africa and Asia, which revised their constitutions and became republics instead.
Britain followed a different model in the Middle East; it installed local monarchies in several colonies and mandates including Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen and Libya. In subsequent decades revolutions and coups
overthrew a number of monarchs and installed republics. Several
monarchies remain, and the Middle East is the only part of the world
where several large states are ruled by monarchs with almost complete
political control.
Socialist republics
In the wake of the First World War, the Russian monarchy fell during the Russian Revolution. The Russian Provisional Government was established in its place on the lines of a liberal republic, but this was overthrown by the Bolsheviks who went on to establish the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This was the first republic established under Marxist-Leninist
ideology. Communism was wholly opposed to monarchy, and became an
important element of many republican movements during the 20th century.
The Russian Revolution spread into Mongolia,
and overthrew its theocratic monarchy in 1924. In the aftermath of the
Second World War the communists gradually gained control of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Albania, ensuring that the states were reestablished as socialist republics rather than monarchies.
Communism also intermingled with other ideologies. It was embraced by many national liberation movements during decolonization. In Vietnam, communist republicans pushed aside the Nguyễn Dynasty, and monarchies in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia were overthrown by communist movements in the 1970s. Arab socialism contributed to a series of revolts and coups that saw the monarchies of Egypt, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen ousted. In Africa Marxist-Leninism and African socialism led to the end of monarchy and the proclamation of republics in states such as Burundi and Ethiopia.
Islamic republics
Islamic political philosophy has a long history of opposition to absolute monarchy, notably in the work of Al-Farabi. Sharia law took precedence over the will of the ruler, and electing rulers by means of the Shura was an important doctrine. While the early caliphate
maintained the principles of an elected ruler, later states became
hereditary or military dictatorships though many maintained some
pretense of a consultative shura.
None of these states are typically referred to as republics. The
current usage of republic in Muslim countries is borrowed from the
western meaning, adopted into the language in the late 19th century.
The 20th century saw republicanism become an important idea in much of
the Middle East, as monarchies were removed in many states of the
region. Iraq became a secular state. Some nations, such as Indonesia and Azerbaijan, began as secular. In Iran, the 1979 revolution overthrew the monarchy and created an Islamic republic based on the ideas of Islamic democracy.
Head of state
Structure
With no monarch, most modern republics use the title president for the head of state.
Originally used to refer to the presiding officer of a committee or
governing body in Great Britain the usage was also applied to political
leaders, including the leaders of some of the Thirteen Colonies (originally Virginia in 1608); in full, the "President of the Council". The first republic to adopt the title was the United States of America. Keeping its usage as the head of a committee the President of the Continental Congress was the leader of the original congress. When the new constitution was written the title of President of the United States was conferred on the head of the new executive branch.
If the head of state of a republic is also the head of government, this is called a presidential system.
There are a number of forms of presidential government. A
full-presidential system has a president with substantial authority and a
central political role.
In other states the legislature is dominant and the presidential role is almost purely ceremonial and apolitical, such as in Germany, Italy, India, and Trinidad and Tobago. These states are parliamentary republics and operate similarly to constitutional monarchies with parliamentary systems
where the power of the monarch is also greatly circumscribed. In
parliamentary systems the head of government, most often titled prime minister, exercises the most real political power. Semi-presidential systems
have a president as an active head of state with important powers, but
they also have a prime minister as a head of government with important
powers.
The rules for appointing the president and the leader of the
government, in some republics permit the appointment of a president and a
prime minister who have opposing political convictions: in France, when
the members of the ruling cabinet and the president come from opposing political factions, this situation is called cohabitation.
In some countries, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, San Marino, and Switzerland,
the head of state is not a single person but a committee (council) of
several persons holding that office. The Roman Republic had two consuls, elected for a one-year term by the comitia centuriata, consisting of all adult, freeborn males who could prove citizenship.
Elections
In liberal democracies,
presidents are elected, either directly by the people or indirectly by a
parliament or council. Typically in presidential and semi-presidential
systems the president is directly elected by the people, or is
indirectly elected as done in the United States. In that country the
president is officially elected by an electoral college,
chosen by the States, all of which do so by direct election of the
electors. The indirect election of the president through the electoral
college conforms to the concept of republic as one with a system of
indirect election. In the opinion of some, direct election confers legitimacy upon the president and gives the office much of its political power.
However, this concept of legitimacy differs from that expressed in the
United States Constitution which established the legitimacy of the
United States president as resulting from the signing of the
Constitution by nine states. The idea that direct election is required for legitimacy also contradicts the spirit of the Great Compromise, whose actual result was manifest in the clause
that provides voters in smaller states with more representation in
presidential selection than those in large states; for example citizens
of Wyoming in 2016 had 3.6 times as much electoral vote representation
as citizens of California.
In states with a parliamentary system the president is usually
elected by the parliament. This indirect election subordinates the
president to the parliament, and also gives the president limited
legitimacy and turns most presidential powers into reserve powers
that can only be exercised under rare circumstance. There are
exceptions where elected presidents have only ceremonial powers, such as
in Ireland.
Ambiguities
The distinction between a republic and a monarchy is not always clear. The constitutional monarchies
of the former British Empire and Western Europe today have almost all
real political power vested in the elected representatives, with the
monarchs only holding either theoretical powers, no powers or rarely
used reserve powers. Real legitimacy for political decisions comes from
the elected representatives and is derived from the will of the people.
While hereditary monarchies remain in place, political power is derived
from the people as in a republic. These states are thus sometimes
referred to as crowned republics.
Terms such as "liberal republic" are also used to describe all of the modern liberal democracies.
There are also self-proclaimed republics that act similarly to
absolute monarchies with absolute power vested in the leader and passed
down from father to son. North Korea and Syria are two notable examples
where a son has inherited political control. Neither of these states are
officially monarchies. There is no constitutional requirement that
power be passed down within one family, but it has occurred in practice.
There are also elective monarchies
where ultimate power is vested in a monarch, but the monarch is chosen
by some manner of election. A current example of such a state is Malaysia where the Yang di-Pertuan Agong is elected every five years by the Conference of Rulers composed of the nine hereditary rulers of the Malay states, and the Vatican City-State, where the pope is selected by cardinal-electors, currently all cardinals
under the age of 80. While rare today, elective monarchs were common in
the past. The Holy Roman Empire is an important example, where each new
emperor was chosen by a group of electors. Islamic states also rarely
employed primogeniture, instead relying on various forms of election to choose a monarch's successor.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had an elective monarchy, with a wide suffrage of some 500,000 nobles. The system, known as the Golden Liberty,
had developed as a method for powerful landowners to control the crown.
The proponents of this system looked to classical examples, and the
writings of the Italian Renaissance, and called their elective monarchy a
rzeczpospolita, based on res publica.
Sub-national republics
In general being a republic also implies sovereignty
as for the state to be ruled by the people it cannot be controlled by a
foreign power. There are important exceptions to this, for example,
republics in the Soviet Union were member states which had to meet three criteria to be named republics:
- be on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to take advantage of their theoretical right to secede;
- be economically strong enough to be self-sufficient upon secession; and
- be named after at least one million people of the ethnic group which should make up the majority population of said republic.
It is sometimes argued that the former Soviet Union was also a
supra-national republic, based on the claim that the member states were
different nation states.
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
was a federal entity composed of six republics (Socialist Republic of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and
Slovenia). Each republic had its parliament, government, institute of
citizenship, constitution, etc., but certain functions were delegated to
the federation (army, monetary matters). Each republic also had a right
of self-determination according to the conclusions of the second session of the AVNOJ and according to the federal constitution.
In Switzerland, all cantons
can be considered to have a republican form of government, with
constitutions, legislatures, executives and courts; many of them being
originally sovereign states. As a consequence, several Romance-speaking
cantons are still officially referred to as republics, reflecting their
history and will of independence within the Swiss Confederation.
Notable examples are the Republic and Canton of Geneva and the Republic and Canton of Ticino.
Flag of the US state of
California, a sub-national entity.
States of the United States are required, like the federal
government, to be republican in form, with final authority resting with
the people. This was required because the states were intended to create
and enforce most domestic laws, with the exception of areas delegated
to the federal government and prohibited to the states. The founders of
the country intended most domestic laws to be handled by the states.
Requiring the states to be a republic in form was seen as protecting the
citizens' rights and preventing a state from becoming a dictatorship or
monarchy, and reflected unwillingness on the part of the original 13
states (all independent republics) to unite with other states that were
not republics. Additionally, this requirement ensured that only other
republics could join the union.
In the example of the United States, the original 13 British colonies became independent
states after the American Revolution, each having a republican form of
government. These independent states initially formed a loose
confederation called the United States and then later formed the current
United States by ratifying the current U.S. Constitution, creating a union that was a republic. Any state joining the union later was also required to be a republic.
Other meanings
Archaic meaning
Before
the 17th Century, the term 'republic' could be used to refer to states
of any form of government as long as it was not a tyrannical regime.
French philosopher Jean Bodin's
definition of the republic was “the rightly ordered government of a
number of families, and of those things which are their common concern,
by a sovereign power.” Oligarchies and monarchies could also be included
as they were also organised toward 'public' shared interests. In medieval texts, 'republic' was used to refer to the body of shared interest with the king at its head. For instance, the Holy Roman Empire was also known as the Sancta Respublica Romana, the Holy Roman Republic. The Byzantine Empire also continued calling itself the Roman Republic
as the Byzantines did not regard monarchy as a contradiction to
republicanism. Instead, republics were defined as any state based on
popular sovereignty and whose institutions were based on shared values.
Political philosophy
The term republic originated from the writers of the Renaissance
as a descriptive term for states that were not monarchies. These
writers, such as Machiavelli, also wrote important prescriptive works
describing how such governments should function. These ideas of how a
government and society should be structured is the basis for an ideology
known as classical republicanism or civic humanism. This ideology is based on the Roman Republic and the city states of Ancient Greece and focuses on ideals such as civic virtue, rule of law and mixed government.
This understanding of a republic as a form of government distinct from a liberal democracy is one of the main theses of the Cambridge School of historical analysis. This grew out of the work of J. G. A. Pocock
who in 1975 argued that a series of scholars had expressed a consistent
set of republican ideals. These writers included Machiavelli, Milton,
Montesquieu and the founders of the United States of America.
Pocock argued that this was an ideology with a history and principles distinct from liberalism. These ideas were embraced by a number of different writers, including Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and Cass Sunstein.
These subsequent writers have further explored the history of the idea,
and also outlined how a modern republic should function.
United States
A distinct set of definitions of the term "republic" evolved in the United States, where the term is often equated with "representative democracy." This narrower understanding of the term was originally developed by James Madison and notably employed in Federalist Paper No. 10. This meaning was widely adopted early in the history of the United States, including in Noah Webster's dictionary of 1828.
It was a novel meaning to the term; representative democracy was not an
idea mentioned by Machiavelli and did not exist in the classical
republics.
There is also evidence that contemporaries of Madison considered the
meaning of "republic" to reflect the broader definition found elsewhere,
as is the case with a quotation of Benjamin Franklin taken from the notes of James McHenry where the question is put forth, "a Republic or a Monarchy?".
The term republic does not appear in the Declaration of Independence,
but it does appear in Article IV of the Constitution, which
"guarantee[s] to every State in this Union a Republican form of
Government." What exactly the writers of the constitution felt this
should mean is uncertain. The Supreme Court, in Luther v. Borden (1849), declared that the definition of republic was a "political question" in which it would not intervene. In two later cases, it did establish a basic definition. In United States v. Cruikshank (1875), the court ruled that the "equal rights of citizens" were inherent to the idea of a republic.
However, the term republic is not synonymous with the republican
form. The republican form is defined as one in which the powers of
sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people,
either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to
whom those powers are specially delegated.
Beyond these basic definitions, the word republic has a number of
other connotations. W. Paul Adams observes that republic is most often
used in the United States as a synonym for "state" or "government," but
with more positive connotations than either of those terms. Republicanism is often referred to as the founding ideology of the United States. Traditionally scholars believed this American republicanism was a derivation of the classical liberal ideologies of John Locke and others developed in Europe.
A political philosophy of republicanism that formed during the
Renaissance period and initiated by Machiavelli was thought to have had
little impact on the founders of the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, a revisionist school led by the likes of Bernard Bailyn began to argue that republicanism was just as or even more important than liberalism in the creation of the United States. This issue is still much disputed and scholars like Isaac Kramnick completely reject this view.
.png)
.jpg)
