Republic

This article concentrates on the several forms of government that have been applied to real states and countries that have been termed republic, for all other uses see: republic (disambiguation)

In a broad definition a republic is a state or country that is led by people that don't found their power status on any principle beyond the control of the people living in that state or country.

This definition encompasses most of the specific definitions that are (or were) used to characterize republics, but leaves much of the striking differences between states/countries that can in some way be called republics unexplained: the first section of this article gives an overview of these distinctions that characterise different types of non-fictional republics.

The second section of the article gives a short profile of some of the most influential republics, by way of illustration to the more comprehensive (but less detailed) List of republics.

There is a third section about the history of how people came to think about several forms of government as republics. This section is a summary of what is in the republicanism article.

Characteristics of republics

Heads of state

In most modern republics the head of state is termed president. In republics that are also democracies the head of state is appointed as the result of an election. This election can be indirect: a council of some sort is elected by the people, and this council elects the head of state. In these kinds of republics the usual term for a president is in the range of four to six years. In some countries the constitution limits the number of terms a same person can be elected as president.

If the head of state of a republic is at the same time the head of government, this is called a presidential system (example: United States). In Semi-presidential systems the head of state is not the same person as the head of government, who in that case is usually termed prime minister. Depending on the rules for appointing the president and the leader of the government, it is for some countries not excluded that the president and the prime minister have opposing political convictions: in France, when the members of the ruling cabinet and the president come from opposing political factions, this is called cohabitation.

In some countries, like Switzerland and San Marino, the head of state is not a single person but a committee (council) of several persons materialising that office. The Roman Republic had two consuls, appointed for a year by the senate, where during the year of their consulship each consul would in turn be head of state during a month, thus alternating the office of consul maior (the consul in power) and of consul suffectus (not-ruling consul, however with some supervision on the work of the consul maior) for their joint term.

Republics can be led by a head of state that has many traits of a monarch: not only do some republics install a president for life, and invest such president with powers beyond what is usual in a representative democracy, examples like the post-1970 Syrian Arab Republic show that such presidency can apparently be made hereditary. Until today historians disagree when the Roman Republic turned into Imperial Rome: the reason is that the first Emperors were given their head of state-like powers gradually, in a government system that in appearence did not differ from the Roman Republic^[1].

Similarly, if taking the broad definition of republic above ("a republic is a state or country that is led by people that don't found their power status on any principle beyond the control of the people living in that state or country"), countries usually qualified as monarchies can have many traits of a republic in terms of form of government: the power status of monarchs can be non-existant, while limited to a "ceremonial" function, and/or the "control of the people" can be excerced thus litterally that they appear to have the power to have their monarch replaced by another one^[2].

The often assumed "mutual exclusiveness" of monarchies and republics as forms of government^[3] is thus not to be taken too litterally, and largely depends on circumstances:

• Autocrats might try to give themselves a democratic tenure by calling themselves president (or princeps senatu in the case of Ancient Rome), and the form of government of their country "republic", instead of using a monarchy-related terminology^[4].
• For full-fledged representative democracies ultimately it does mostly not make all that much difference whether the head of state is a monarch or a president, neither whether these countries call themselves monarchy or republic: other factors, for instance stance on religious matters (see next section), can often make a greater distinguishing mark when comparing the forms of government of actual states and countries.

For this reason, in political science the several definitions of "republic", which in such context invariably indicate an "ideal" form of government, do not always exclude monarchy: the evolution of such definitions of "republic" in a context of political philosophy is treated in republicanism. However, such theoretical approaches appear to have had no real influence on the everyday use (that is: apart from a scholar or "insider" context) of the terminology regarding republics and monarchies^[5].

The least that can be said is that Anti-Monarchism, this is the opposition to monarchy as such, played no equal role in the creation and/or management of republics. For some republics, not choosing a monarch as head of state, could as well be a practical rather than an ideological consideration, for example while there was no candidate-monarch readily available. However, for the states created during or shortly after the enlightenment the choice was always deliberate: republics created in that period inevitably had anti-monarchial characteristics: for the United States the opposition to the British Monarchy played an important role, as did the overthrow of the French Monarchy in the creation of the first French Republic. By the time of the creation of the Fifth Republic in that country "anti-monarchist" tendencies were barely felt: the relations of that country to other countries made no distinctions whether these other countries were "monarchies" or not.

Role of religion

An important reason why people chose their society to be organised as a republic is the prospect of staying free of state religion: in this approach living under a monarch is seen as more easily inducing a uniform religion: all great monarchies had their state religion, in the case of pharaos and some emperors this could even lead to a religion where the monarch (or his dynasty) were endowed with a god-like status (see for example imperial cult). On a different scale kingdoms can be entangled in a specific flavour of religion: Catholicism in Belgium, Church of England in the United Kingdom, Orthodoxy in Tzaristic Russia and many more examples.

In absence of a monarchy, there can be no monarch pushing towards a single religion: this advantage was exploited for instance by following republics, rooted in the Enlightenment:

• United States: the Founding Fathers, seeing that no single religion would do for all americans, certainly not the religion of the country they wanted to cut themselves loose from, adopted the principle of free choice of religion for all citizens.
• Besides being anti-monarchial, the French Revolution, leading to the first French Republic, was at least as much anti-religious, and led to the confiscation, pillage and/or destruction of many abbeys, beguinages, churches and other religious buildings and/or communities. Up to the Fifth Republic, laïcité can be seen to have a much more profound meaning in republican France than in its neigbouring countries ruled as a monarchy (example: French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools - a similar law was tentatively debated in Belgium, but deemed incompatible with the less profoundly secularized Belgian state).

Several states that called themselves republics have been fiercely anti-religious. This is particularily true for communist republics like the (former) Soviet Republics, North Vietnam, North Korea, China,... probably lack of religion is one of the only factors that approached these republics to (some) western types of republics apart from the name and their anti-monarchism (so not so surprising that France was one of the West European countries that was closest to many communist regimes). On the other hand in these communist countries Marxist and/or Stalinist and/or Maoist (etc.) doctrines can be seen to be at least as determining as a state religion.

Some countries prefer to organise themselves as a republic, precisely because it allows them to inscribe a more or less obligatory state religion in their constitution: islamic republics generally take this approach, but the same is also true (in varying degrees) for example for Israel, for the protestant republic that originated in the Netherlands in the renaissance, for the Catholic Irish Republic, among others. In this case the advantage that is sought is that no broad-thinking monarch could push his citizens towards a less strict application of religious prescriptions, like for instance the Millet system had done in the Ottoman Empire. Such approach of an ideal republic based on a religious foundation played an important role for example in the overthrow of the regime of the Shah in Iran, to be replaced by a republic with influential religious leaders (in this case called ayatollahs).

Concepts of democracy

Republics are often associated with democracy. This is however far from a general understanding, even if acknowledging that there are several forms of democracy. This paragraph tries to give an outline of which concepts of democracy are associated with which types of republics.

As a preliminary remark it should be noted that the concept of "one equal vote per adult" did not become a genereral accepted principle in democracies until around the middle of the 20th century: before that in all democracies the valour of ones vote (or the right to be able to vote) depended on financial situation and/or sex. Many forms of government in previous times termed "democracy" would, when transplanted to the early 21st century be experienced as plutocracy or a more or less broad oligarchy.

In a Western approach, warned by the possible dangers and unpracticality of direct democracy described since antiquity, there was a convergence towards representative democracy, for republics as well as monarchies, from the Enlightenment on. A direct democracy instrument like referendums is in many of these countries still basicly mistrusted. Nonetheless, some republics like Switzerland have a great deal of direct democracy in their state organisation, with usually several issues put before the people by referendum every year.

Marxism inspired to state organisations that, at the height of the cold war, had barely more than a few external appearances in common with Western types of democracies. That is, notwithstanding that ideologically Marxism and communism sought to empower proletarians. A communist republic like Castro's Cuba has many popular comittees to draw citizens into political activity on a very basic level, without much of a far reaching political power resulting from that. Some of the hard core totalitarism lived on in the East, even after the iron curtain had vanished in Europe. Sometimes the full name of such republics can be deceptive: having "people's" or "democratic" etc in the name of a country can, in some cases bear no relation with the concepts of democracy (neither "representative" nor "direct") that grew in the West. It also should be clear that many of these "Eastern" type of republics fall outside a definition of a republic that supposes control over who is in power by the people at large – unless it is accepted that the preference the people displays for their leader is in all cases authentic.

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. Republics in the Soviet Union were member states which had to meet three criteria to be named republics, 1) Be on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to take advantage of their theoretical right to secede, 2) be economically strong enough to be self sufficient upon secession, And 3) Be named after at least one million people of the ethnic group which should make up the majority population of said republic. Republics were originally created by Stalin and continue to be created even today in Russia. Russia itself is not a republic but a federation.

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 founding fathers of the country intended most domestic laws to be handled by the states, although, over time, the federal government has gained more and more influence over domestic law. Requiring the states to be a republic in form was also seen as protecting the citizens' rights and preventing a state from becoming a dictatorship or monarchy.

Supra-national republics

Sovereign countries can decide to hand in a limited part of their sovereignity to a supra-national organisation. The most famous example of this, since the second half of the 20th century, is the emergence of the European Union, which models its organisation as a republic (that it would be a republic in a strict sense can be debated while the European Union is not a "country" in a strict sense). Being a republic is in any case no part of the admission criteria for the member states^[6].

Examples

Since the French Revolution the overthrow of monarchies has become common place and the vast majority of countries are today republics of some form. There are only a few dozen kingdoms, dominions, emirates, or principalities remaining. The republics of today have little in common besides not being monarchies of some form. Countries that call themselves republics include nations as diverse as North Korea, Iran, Togo, and the United States. Most states in the world consider themselves to be some sort of republic. Of those that are not monarchies only the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, State of the Vatican City, the State of Israel, the Union of Myanmar and Russian Federation reject the label republic. Israel and Russia, and even Myanmar and Libya, would meet many definitions of the term republic, however.

Currently there is a very large number of republics in the world. A republican form of government can be combined with many different kinds of economy and democracy. Some examples for certain forms of republic are:

• Federal republic - USA, Austria are republics governed by representative democracy, in which the states play a crucial role.
• Confederation - Switzerland is a confederal republic governed by a combination of representative democracy and direct democracy.
• Islamic Republic - Countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran are republics governed in accordance with Islamic law.
• People's Republic - Countries like China, North Korea are meant to be governed for and by the people but generally without direct elections. This name is generally used by communist states.
• Democratic Republic - Also often used by communists is similar in meaning to People's Republic.
• A wide array of other adjectives are used democratic is common but essentially meaningless. Syria is the "Arab Republic" reflecting its theoretically pan-Arab Ba'athist government. Other modifiers are rooted in tradition and history and have little meaning today. San Marino, for instance, is the "Most Serene Republic" while Uruguay is the "Eastern Republic".

See also: List of Republics

Republics in political science

Template:DirectionUndecidedSection As mentioned above, a different interpretation of republic is used among political scientists - in fact several, often opposed, interpretations of the concept republic are used among political scientists. This is further discussed in the Republicanism article.

References and notes

1. ^ Tacitus, Ann. I,1-15.
2. ^ Example: Leopold III of Belgium replaced by Baudouin in 1951 under popular pressure.
3. ^ See for example the opening chapter of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince.
4. ^ For instance Mobutu Sésé Seko is generally considered such "autocrat" that tried to give an appearance of "republican democracy" to his style of government, for instance by allowing something that was generally regarded a sockpuppet opposition.
5. ^ References where in everyday language countries with a king or emperor as head of state are termed republic have not been encountered.
6. ^ see for example Title IX and Title I in the text for a constitution for Europe