What is Republicanism?
The word comes from the Latin res publica, the public thing. Republicans have a particular view of freedom. In their eyes, a person is unfree if someone else can push them around at will, even if that someone is kind and rarely uses the power. A slave with a gentle master is still not free. To keep power from being arbitrary, republicans want laws that bind everyone, power that is divided, and citizens who watch their rulers. They also look for rulers chosen for a time, not born to the job. Do not confuse this with the Republican Party of the United States. The tradition is far older, and it influenced that country's founders.
Core beliefs
- You are free only when no one can dominate you at their whim.
- Laws, not people, should rule.
- Government should split power and set its parts against each other.
- Citizens should take part in public life and care about the common good.
- A free state needs honest officials, and corruption is a mortal danger.
- Kings and unaccountable elites are a threat to liberty.
History
The ideas go back to Rome, whose republic lasted nearly five hundred years, and to Greek thinkers such as Aristotle and Polybius who admired mixed government. Cicero was a key Roman voice. Italian city states like Florence and Venice revived the tradition in the Renaissance, and Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy praised a Rome in which conflict between classes kept it free. In England the idea was developed during and after the civil wars by James Harrington, who wrote Oceana in 1656, and Algernon Sidney. In the 1700s, Montesquieu wrote about the separation of powers, and Rousseau's The Social Contract of 1762 argued that people are free only when they obey laws they make together. The American and French revolutions set up republics. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison argued that a large republic could handle the danger of factions. Interest in the tradition returned among scholars in the late twentieth century.
Variants
Scholars describe two main strands. One draws on Aristotle, Rousseau and Hannah Arendt, and treats taking part in politics as part of a good human life. The other, the neo-Roman strand, draws on Cicero and Machiavelli and values participation mostly as protection from domination. Classical republics often linked citizenship to owning property and serving in the militia. Modern republicans apply non-domination more widely, to workplaces, families and large companies. Elsewhere in the world, republicanism also names movements to replace a monarch with an elected head of state.
Criticisms
Liberals argue that stressing civic virtue can lead to pressure on citizens to follow one idea of a good life, and that freedom as non-interference is simpler to defend. Historians point out that old republics gave rights to a small group of men and often tolerated slavery and the exclusion of women. Others say the model suits small city states better than big diverse nations. Some critics find the idea of non-domination too vague to guide real policy decisions. Republicans reply that a free life needs more than being left alone, and that their ideas can be updated.
In practice
Republican thinking shaped the written constitutions of the United States and France, with their elected offices, limits on power and refusal of hereditary rule. It stands behind ideas such as term limits, independent courts, jury service and civic education. Today it features in arguments about campaign money, lobbying, anti-corruption laws and the power employers hold over workers. On the 12 axes it scores strongly toward Democratic on Authority, with mild leans toward Private on Ownership and National identity on Culture.