Republic

The concept of the republic has been used to describe at once an attitude toward political life and a constitutional form of political order. In both senses it has always been contrasted with tyrannical or monarchical rule. The term has its roots in Roman political vocabulary. The res publica means literally "the public thing," or that which is shared by a public. The Roman orator Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.) summed up its usage best in De Republica (On the Commonwealth) when he argued that a republic consists of rule by the people, and the people consist of the citizens gathered together under law for mutual advantage, that is, for the public good.

Along with the emphasis on a regime deriving its authority from popular will and aimed toward the common good, the Roman meaning also included an emphasis on civic virtue and the striving for glory—citizens distinguishing themselves by putting the good of the whole community above their personal interest. Finally, for the Romans a republic, unlike a tyranny or a monarchy, protected the freedom of its citizens both in the negative sense of prevention against unjust intrusions by political power and in the positive sense of guaranteeing the right of citizen participation. Indeed, the two notions of freedom were seen as supporting each other, for both derived from protection against domination.

Curiously, as a constitutional arrangement of power, a republic could take many different forms. The only requirement was that it be a mixed form of government, combining the positive features of monarchy, aristocracy , and democracy so that these different kinds rule might balance and moderate the extremes of one another. This requirement was derived from Aristotle's (384–322 b.c.e.) concept of polity in books three and four of The Politics. During the Roman period it was further developed by Polybius (200–118 b.c.e.), who argued that a durable republic could be constructed by balancing these three forms in the distribution of public offices: If properly done, each form would provide a check on the others; however, during an external crises all three would compete to enhance the good of the state.

During the later medieval period and through the Renaissance (1400s and 1500s) debate was ongoing among the civic humanists over the exact composition of a well-ordered republic. Some sided with the model of the Venetian republic, which was highly stable and ruled by an oligarchy based on birth. Others sided with the Florentine model, which was far less stable but incorporated the lower classes of craftspeople into the rule of the city. Different civic humanists saw the mixture of popular government, aristocratic government, and executive rule differently, depending on whether they emphasized stability or liberty through citizen participation.

In 1513 Niccoló Machiavelli (1469–1527) entered this debate in a new and innovative way with his Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli attacked both the aristocratic model of a republic based on achieving stability through balance and the more democratic model seeking to transform the inner character of citizens into public-regarding beings. Radically revising the Roman model, he argued that republican liberty and the common good will best be achieved in a republic that encourages a constant but controlled conflict between the ordinary people seeking to escape domination and the few who desire to rule. When the common people actively resisted the rulers through street protests and indictments of power-hungry political leaders, laws leading to republican self-government would be introduced.

Equally important, Machiavelli insisted, a republic that responded to the demands of the common people could mobilize all of its citizens to fight on its behalf when it sought to expand its power over other states—aristocratic or oligarchical republics could not avail themselves of this political resource. Machiavelli was one of the first political thinkers to recognize that even though there was an inherent tendency in all republics for an oligarchical or aristocratic political class to arise, a constant tension between the many and the few would result in the continuous expansion of popular self-government and the introduction of laws favoring the common good.

radical republicanism versus commercial society

Machiavelli's focus on the ordinary people as a dynamic force in a republic and his emphasis on popular conflict as a healthy element of political life spawned a variety of reactions among later republican thinkers. Some republican thinkers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Thomas Paine (1737–1809), and later Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), sought to make popular sovereignty the center of republican theory. Others, such as James Madison (1751–1836) saw radical republicanism as a danger to political stability and sought instead to redefine republican theory so that it might accommodate the new commercial market society of the later eighteenth century and its notions of private property.

Rousseau is of particular importance to the post-Machiavellian tradition of radical republicanism because he combined democratic popular sovereignty with mixed government in a way that shifted the model republic decidedly in the direction of direct democracy. Famously he argued in The Social Contract that the only legitimate republic is one in which the sovereign authority consists of an assembly of citizens who participate directly in legislating general laws for themselves as subjects. He called this authority, in which the makers of the laws and the subjects of the laws were identical, the general will. In an even more radical move he argued that the government must be made dependent on the general will. Its job was to carry out the laws, not to make them.

According to Rousseau, for the government to heed the general will, it had to combine the monarchical principle in an executive, the aristocratic principle in a representative body, and the democratic principle in the subjects of government. The right balance would be reached when the government was strong enough to implement the laws but not so strong that it usurped the authority of the general will. By putting the republican approach to constitutional balance in the service of the republican ideal of direct citizen participation, Rousseau claimed he was merely restoring the ancient model of citizenship at a time when it had been undermined by large territorial centralized states and by the inequalities of property produced through the new commercial markets.

Viewing such radical notions of republicanism as a danger to both private property and a stable political order, James Madison, especially in The Federalist Papers numbers 10 and 51, argued that a republic was distinct from a democracy. Although republican government must be authorized by the people, it must be organized so that no majority could attack the natural rights to private property of the few. To this end, he proposed that instead of transforming citizens into publicly interested legislators, as did Rousseau, republican government should be spread over so wide an area as to encompass as many self-interested factions as possible.

In this way, a new kind of balance was introduced into republican theory; namely, organized partial interests would at once compete with one another to advance their political goals and check one another so that a permanent majority interest could not form. Here Madison quite explicitly believed he was applying the new psychology of interest developed in Adam Smith's (1723–1790) theory of the competitive market as well as the Newtonian theory of a closed balanced energy system to produce stability through an equilibrium of interests.

On this foundation, Madison introduced his famous account of the American constitution as a system of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as well as his slightly less famous account of representative government in which the House of Representatives would be elected by the citizens but the Senate would be selected from the better, more politically virtuous classes through the state legislatures. The significance of Madison's revision of the republican model is that he at once made it compatible with a society of commercial interests while diminishing the republican ideal of citizens participating in authorizing laws for the public interest. Liberty as protection against popular rule trumped liberty as participation in popular rule.

from political way of life to constitutional form

The tension between the radical popular republicanism and a republicanism rooted in the protection of individual rights continued into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. Increasingly, from the later nineteenth century through the whole of the twentieth century the latter took the place of the former. Liberal states based on constitutionally limited government, representative institutions, competitive parties, and capitalist property relations have claimed to be republics to the degree that they have consisted of a divided government whose authority is derived from the people. The ideal of participatory republicanism, however, has disappeared into the struggle for democracy. Since the nineteenth century, democratic movements—whether they were seeking universal suffrage, socialist transformations of the economy and the state, or more participation in the workplace or the local community—have incorporated that ideal. In the twentieth century both liberal and illiberal states claimed to be republics in their constitutional structure. Indeed, almost all constitutional regimes call themselves republics. At this point the original plasticity of the term has led almost to complete shapelessness.

the revival of the republican ideal

Nonetheless, in the later twentieth century and the beginning of twenty-first century a number of writers sought to revive republican thought as a way of criticizing the concern in modern liberal "democracies" with the individual pursuit of private interest, the dominance of the market in social life, and, above all, the limited participation of citizens in political life. Among them, Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) has proposed a synthesis between liberal procedural democracy and radical republican models. His model institutes an active sphere of deliberative public opinion between society and the institutions of government that would legitimate legislative actions according to whether they might achieve the public good.

Other commentators have argued that the Internet could revive the republican ideal of public participation in political life by instituting a sphere in which all citizens, no matter how dispersed, could discuss and debate opinions. However, others fear it might allow citizens to select only those opinions and sources of information with which they agree. Finally, some commentators, using the European Union as a model, speak of republican citizenship being extended on a global scale as new problems arise, such as regional diseases, global poverty, and ecological damage, that cannot be dealt with at the national level.

conclusion

Throughout the history of its usage, a tension has always existed in the concept of republicanism. As a form of political life, it represents the striving to launch a political community in which citizens regularly participate in legislating laws for the common good, resist tendencies toward tyranny, and seek recognition by fulfilling their duties to the community as a whole. It is the idea of a small civic community applied to a large-scale political order. As an institutional arrangement of power, however, it has accommodated a variety of political forms. Some republics tend toward a democratic form of sovereignty, including citizens actively in their common life; others are more aristocratic, allowing citizens only to be represented by their betters; still others tend to subordinate both the few and the many to more executive rule; and yet other forms claim to derive their authority from the common people but divide the decision-making power among representative legislative bodies such as a parliament or congress, an executive such as a prime minister or president, and a judicial branch such as a supreme or high court.

niccolÒ machiavelli (1469–1527)

Niccolò Machiavelli is generally considered the founder of modern political science. Born in Florence, he entered the service of the city's government in 1498. Machiavelli learned about power politics firsthand through his work as a diplomat. His missions on behalf of the Florentine Republic included meetings with King Louis XII of France (in 1504 and 1510), Pope Julius II (in 1506), and Emperor Maximilian I (in 1507).

After the Medici family returned to power in Florence in 1512, Machiavelli was jailed and briefly tortured on charges that he had been involved in a plot against the family. After his release, he retired to the countryside to write his major works, the Discourses on Livy (1517) and The Prince (published posthumously in 1532). In May 1527 the Florentines again drove out the Medici and briefly reestablished a republic, but the people no longer trusted Machiavelli. He died on June 22, 1527, embittered by the city's refusal to offer him a government position.

Machiavelli's political thought is marked by two important innovations. The first is his notion that a healthy state is marked by internal social conflict rather than stability—an idea set forth in the Discourses on Livy. The second is his separation of political analysis from ethics or moral philosophy—a break with tradition that made his name a synonym for the cynical and amoral use of power.

Hence, as an institutional form, a republic can deviate rather widely from the ideal that is intended to legitimate it. And yet, in practice, almost every regime in the world in the twenty-first century—be it dictatorial, ruled by one party, or organized through a system of competitive parties—claims to be a republic of some kind. It would seem that very few political regimes want to forgo the claim to legitimacy represented by the republican ideal of a constitution resting on popular will—even if they are loath to realize it.

See also: Constitutions and Constitutionalism; Democracy; Popular Sovereignty.

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Peter Breiner