I don't think "republic" is a category that has much standing in political theory (as opposed to among US conservatives, as you note). The three political forms that Aristotle considered were monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy: rule by one, by the few, and by the many. "Republic" would seem to be a euphemism for the corrupted form of aristocracy, oligarchy. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
Here's a relevant passage from the book (pp. 255-56). It confirms that "republic" is an ideological, rather than a theoretical, category:
Foreign observers were impressed by the intensity of political interest among ordinary Americans. During the years from roughly the 1760s to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 an American demos began to establish a foothold and to find institutional expression, if not full realization. State constitutions were amended by provisions that broadened the suffrage, abolished property qualifications for office, and in one case instituted women's suffrage. There were also efforts to ease debtor laws, even to abolish slavery. Those "attacks" on property and the concomitant threat of demotic rule were crucial considerations prompting several outstanding politicians (Madison, Hamilton, John Adams) to organize a quiet counterrevolution aimed at institutionalizing a counterforce to challenge the prevailing decentralized system of thirteen sovereign states in which some state legislatures were controlled by "popular" forces. A new system of national power was proposed, at once centered yet with authority coextensive with the boundaries of the nation, and designed to discourage demotic power both by reducing the authority of the states, several of which had enacted legislation favorable to the lower classes, and by minimizing the role of the demos in national institutions. Only the House of Representatives would be more or less directly elected.34 The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience--a governing class composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all classes to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political class bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities. Republican theory emerged as the counterforce to demotic power, thus perpetuating a dualism that had first appeared in ancient Athens. As noted earlier, republicanism promoted the notion of a governing class, an idealized aristocracy, virtuous, able, and public spirited. When the theory was transported from Britain to America, it had to accommodate to bourgeois values of wealth and competence and to acknowledge in some degree the presence of democratic ideas and practices.35 In America republicanism had to find a place for democracy, eventually even endow it with sovereignty--if only in the abstract--while contriving obstacles to popular power that simultaneously advantaged the Few (e.g., a property qualification for voting) and defined governing in ways that corresponded to the abilities of a new class of merchants, bankers, lawyers, and manufacturers.
Those "attacks" on property and the concomitant threat of demotic rule were crucial considerations prompting several outstanding politicians (Madison, Hamilton, John Adams) to organize a quiet counterrevolution aimed at institutionalizing a counterforce to challenge the prevailing decentralized system of thirteen sovereign states in which some state legislatures were controlled by "popular" forces. A new system of national power was proposed, at once centered yet with authority coextensive with the boundaries of the nation, and designed to discourage demotic power both by reducing the authority of the states, several of which had enacted legislation favorable to the lower classes, and by minimizing the role of the demos in national institutions. Only the House of Representatives would be more or less directly elected.34 The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience--a governing class composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all classes to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political class bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities.
Republican theory emerged as the counterforce to demotic power, thus perpetuating a dualism that had first appeared in ancient Athens. As noted earlier, republicanism promoted the notion of a governing class, an idealized aristocracy, virtuous, able, and public spirited. When the theory was transported from Britain to America, it had to accommodate to bourgeois values of wealth and competence and to acknowledge in some degree the presence of democratic ideas and practices.35 In America republicanism had to find a place for democracy, eventually even endow it with sovereignty--if only in the abstract--while contriving obstacles to popular power that simultaneously advantaged the Few (e.g., a property qualification for voting) and defined governing in ways that corresponded to the abilities of a new class of merchants, bankers, lawyers, and manufacturers.
The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience--a governing class composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all classes to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political class bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities.
Emperor Joseph II said, "Everything for the people, nothing by the people."
It was inevitable that, given how the constitution was designed to prevent a majority from emerging, the US would end up where it is today, a plutocracy. The only remedy against the political power that comes from great wealth is a vigorous democracy.
Of course, democracy is in a weakened state in Europe as well:
Ruling the Void? The Hollowing of Western Democracy
But at least European countries are not subject to the corrupting effects of running an empire. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
The start of capitalism depends on the definition, with some definitions it well predates Absolutism.
It is hard for despots to be enlightened and progress-minded if they have to deal with powerful monied interests.
Absolutism was a restoration of royal power against both powerful feudal and monied interests. Earlier kings were already dependent on bankiers to fight their wars. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Democracy, by and large, was a convenient ideology to foment a revolution when the plutocrats and the nobility ceased to be coterminous.
Liberty and freedom and individual inalienable rights and all that jazz just piggybacked on that trend.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
But, starting with the Reagan presidency, a new kind of anti-democratic system began to emerge, one grounded in the US's being a superpower.
I don't think this is new at all. I see echoes of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine all over it...
Also, what I was thinking of was that during the Reagan presidency, the press changed, becoming postmodern. The idea that journalists could be objective observers of reality was given up. Any position became just a point of view, with the new journalistic standard being that "both sides of the story" need to be told.
I remember watching a discussion about Star Wars on the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour in the early 80s, and thinking I was seeing something new. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
This tendency had been kept mostly in check during the early postwar period, by a variety of different institutional, social and legal constraints (anti-trust laws, comparatively strong newsie labour unions, fairness doctrines, the comparative lack of political polarisation and many others). Those constraints were either withering or being actively dismantled in the early 80's and late '70s, and so the press returned to its earlier role as propagandist (of course, on those matters where the political consensus departed from reality - most notably in matters of foreign policy and "The Cold War" - this role had never really been abandoned in the first place...).
There were three crucial differences this time around, though: The absence of any kind of organised labour with the capacity to underwrite their own news organisations, the existence of a large, organised propaganda industry and the comparative affluence of modern society, which to a large extent enable us to insulate ourselves from the consequences of wrong-headed policies until they are deeply entrenched and have already done considerable damage.
(Television didn't do public discourse any favours either, nor did the fact that these developments coincided with the decision by one of your major political parties to take leave of its senses...)
Today I am less sure what it means. Maybe it means the US is meant to be republican, ie ruled by the republican party. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
From Ron Paul early in 2000:
The term republic had a significant meaning for both of them and all early Americans. It meant a lot more than just representative government and was a form of government in stark contrast to pure democracy where the majority dictated laws and rights. And getting rid of the English monarchy was what the Revolution was all about, so a monarchy was out of the question. ... Our constitutional Republic, according to our Founders, should above all else protect the rights of the minority against the abuses of an authoritarian majority. They feared democracy as much as monarchy and demanded a weak executive, a restrained court, and a handicapped legislature.
...
Our constitutional Republic, according to our Founders, should above all else protect the rights of the minority against the abuses of an authoritarian majority. They feared democracy as much as monarchy and demanded a weak executive, a restrained court, and a handicapped legislature.
The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) "Men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny. They had studied the history of both the Greek democracies and the Roman republic. They had a clear understanding of the relative freedom and stability that had characterized the latter, and of the strife and turmoil -- quickly followed by despotism -- that had characterized the former. In drafting the Constitution, they created a government of law and not of men, a republic and not a democracy.
Benjamin Franklin explained the threat democracy poses to liberty thusly: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
The numerous divisions and conflicting interests of contemporary society that make it difficult to muster a coherent majority appear a striking confirmation of the prescience of James Madison's argument in the tenth Federalist. Madison's essay is worth recalling, not only because conservative writers and politicians treat it as constitutional gospel, and not only because Plato's antidemocratic argument resurfaces in it, but also because it reveals the conception of a constitution designed to frustrate the politics of commonality. [...] Since the revolution of 1776 had depended upon popular participation and as a result aroused democratic hopes, political expediency dictated that democratic impulses be controlled rather than suppressed. In short, how to manage democracy, or how to exploit division and thereby dilute commonality? The solution required identifying the conditions for an antimajoritarian republic, for nullifying the single most important power element of democracy, not sheer numbers but differences that might discover their commonality. The solution required an expanded society where the geography of huge distances combined with "a greater number of citizens" and "a greater variety of parties and interests" would render it "less probable" that "an unjust and interested majority" or a single "religious sect" or "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project . . . [could] pervade the whole body of the Union."
Since the revolution of 1776 had depended upon popular participation and as a result aroused democratic hopes, political expediency dictated that democratic impulses be controlled rather than suppressed. In short, how to manage democracy, or how to exploit division and thereby dilute commonality?
The solution required identifying the conditions for an antimajoritarian republic, for nullifying the single most important power element of democracy, not sheer numbers but differences that might discover their commonality. The solution required an expanded society where the geography of huge distances combined with "a greater number of citizens" and "a greater variety of parties and interests" would render it "less probable" that "an unjust and interested majority" or a single "religious sect" or "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project . . . [could] pervade the whole body of the Union."
And that's not entirely a bad thing. It is pointed out with some regularity that, if it had been up to the people in a referendum, Europe would still have the death penalty. Mob rule is a nasty thing and we didn't get the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by a democratic vote. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
It amazes me that Aristotle's ideas are still current and recognisable. The traditional view seems to consider politics as inherently zero-sum - power is desired and acquired by interest groups entirely for their own benefit, at the expense of other groups.
This is how politics actually works empirically, but that could be because the assumptions are taken for granted and haven't been challenged for more than two millennia.
Compared to developments in science, mathematics and philosophy, it's a tremendous failure of imagination and vision.
Blindness to social coercions persisted in the thought of nineteenth-century liberal writers and accounts in no small measure for the failure of liberalism to comprehend the phenomena of "mass societies." The true measure of this is to be found in the political ideas of John Stuart Mill. Today Mill's fame derives from his impassioned plea for individual freedom and his acute analysis of the social pressures working to destroy variety and spontaneity in human character. As he explained in his Autobiography, the essay On Liberty was an indictment of the "oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice." And true enough the essay contained many noble passages defending the right of the individual to go his own way despite the offense it might give to the opinions of society. "... The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection ... His own good ... is not a sufficient warrant." Yet there remained a hopelessly unreal quality about Mill's principles of liberty, one which has the effect of reducing them to mere preaching, even if of a highly commendable kind. For when it is asked, how are these principles to be enforced? Mill could give no answer because his own argument had compromised the integrity of the only means possible, namely government. If society is the enemy of individuality and if, at the same time, the dangerous development of modern democracy is that it makes government the agent of society, it is hardly to be expected that society's agent could intervene to protect the individual from society. Even more perplexing was the contradictory tendency of Mill to fall back on the very power of society which he had sought to expel in Liberty. The same Mill who had accused Comte of aiming at "a despotism of society over the individual," who had welcomed Tocqueville's profound analysis of social conformity, nevertheless proposed that the tyranny of opinion be invoked in order to promote some of his own pet causes. First, his personal bête-noire, the old problem of overpopulation, could be alleviated, Mill argued, if there were sufficiently intense social disapproval of large families. "Any one who supposes that this state of opinion would not have a great effect on conduct, must be profoundly ignorant of human nature." Secondly, Mill's argument in Representative Government for an "open" rather than a secret ballot was founded on the proposition that voting was a public trust and hence "should be performed under the eye and criticism of the public ..." It is less dangerous, Mill concluded, for the individual to be influenced by "others" than by "the sinister interests and discreditable feelings which belong to himself, either individually or as a member of a class." Finally, Mill's sympathies with moderate socialism were derived in part from a belief that a society based on communal ownership had superior methods at its disposal for compelling the lazy members to produce. Under capitalism, incentives of selfinterest had failed to eliminate parasitism, for the parasites had been only too willing to follow their self-interest in concocting ingenious ways to avoid work. But under socialism the bulk of the members would have a common interest in the productive output of the society, hence the malingerer would face the solidified resentment of the community. Where the private employer could only dismiss a worker, socialist society could stigmatize him by public opinion, "the most universal and one of the strongest" methods of control. (Politics and Vision, pp. 312-313)
Today Mill's fame derives from his impassioned plea for individual freedom and his acute analysis of the social pressures working to destroy variety and spontaneity in human character. As he explained in his Autobiography, the essay On Liberty was an indictment of the "oppressive yoke of uniformity in opinion and practice." And true enough the essay contained many noble passages defending the right of the individual to go his own way despite the offense it might give to the opinions of society. "... The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection ... His own good ... is not a sufficient warrant." Yet there remained a hopelessly unreal quality about Mill's principles of liberty, one which has the effect of reducing them to mere preaching, even if of a highly commendable kind. For when it is asked, how are these principles to be enforced? Mill could give no answer because his own argument had compromised the integrity of the only means possible, namely government. If society is the enemy of individuality and if, at the same time, the dangerous development of modern democracy is that it makes government the agent of society, it is hardly to be expected that society's agent could intervene to protect the individual from society.
Even more perplexing was the contradictory tendency of Mill to fall back on the very power of society which he had sought to expel in Liberty. The same Mill who had accused Comte of aiming at "a despotism of society over the individual," who had welcomed Tocqueville's profound analysis of social conformity, nevertheless proposed that the tyranny of opinion be invoked in order to promote some of his own pet causes. First, his personal bête-noire, the old problem of overpopulation, could be alleviated, Mill argued, if there were sufficiently intense social disapproval of large families. "Any one who supposes that this state of opinion would not have a great effect on conduct, must be profoundly ignorant of human nature." Secondly, Mill's argument in Representative Government for an "open" rather than a secret ballot was founded on the proposition that voting was a public trust and hence "should be performed under the eye and criticism of the public ..." It is less dangerous, Mill concluded, for the individual to be influenced by "others" than by "the sinister interests and discreditable feelings which belong to himself, either individually or as a member of a class." Finally, Mill's sympathies with moderate socialism were derived in part from a belief that a society based on communal ownership had superior methods at its disposal for compelling the lazy members to produce. Under capitalism, incentives of selfinterest had failed to eliminate parasitism, for the parasites had been only too willing to follow their self-interest in concocting ingenious ways to avoid work. But under socialism the bulk of the members would have a common interest in the productive output of the society, hence the malingerer would face the solidified resentment of the community. Where the private employer could only dismiss a worker, socialist society could stigmatize him by public opinion, "the most universal and one of the strongest" methods of control. (Politics and Vision, pp. 312-313)
I don't think "republic" is a category that has much standing in political theory
Plato, of course, wrote The Republic
Aristotle actually delineated SIX forms : there are three pairs of congruent governments : A state with only one ruler is either a monarchy or a tyranny A state with several rulers is either an aristocracy or an oligarchy A state in which mob rule or a democracy.
He found flaws with all of them and thus concluded that none were suitable systems of government. Aristotle largely embraced Plato's ideas and in his Politics three types (sans Timocracy) are discussed in detail. Aristotle views aristocracy to be the ideal form of government but he observes that none of the three are healthy and that states will cycle between the three forms in an abrupt and chaotic process known as the kyklos. In his Politics he lists a number of theories of how to create a stable government. One of these options is creating a government that is a mix of all three forms of government. .... The ideal of a mixed government was popularized by Polybius who saw the Roman Republic as a manifestation of Aristotle's theory. Monarchy was embodied by the consuls, the aristocracy by the Senate, and democracy by the elections and great public gatherings of the assemblies. Each institution complements and also checks the others, presumably guaranteeing stability and prosperity. Polybius also describes Sparta as an earlier manifestation of this ideal. Polybius was very influential and his ideas were embraced by Cicero. .... Cicero became extremely well regarded during the Renaissance and many of his ideas were embraced. Polybius was also rediscovered and the positive view of mixed governments became a central aspect of Renaissance political science integrated into the developing notion of republicanism. Mixed government theories became extremely popular in the Enlightenment and were discussed in detail by Hobbes, Locke, Vico, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Kant. Apart from his contemporaries, only Montesquieu became widely acknowledged as the author of a concept of separation of powers
....
The ideal of a mixed government was popularized by Polybius who saw the Roman Republic as a manifestation of Aristotle's theory. Monarchy was embodied by the consuls, the aristocracy by the Senate, and democracy by the elections and great public gatherings of the assemblies. Each institution complements and also checks the others, presumably guaranteeing stability and prosperity. Polybius also describes Sparta as an earlier manifestation of this ideal. Polybius was very influential and his ideas were embraced by Cicero.
Cicero became extremely well regarded during the Renaissance and many of his ideas were embraced. Polybius was also rediscovered and the positive view of mixed governments became a central aspect of Renaissance political science integrated into the developing notion of republicanism. Mixed government theories became extremely popular in the Enlightenment and were discussed in detail by Hobbes, Locke, Vico, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Kant. Apart from his contemporaries, only Montesquieu became widely acknowledged as the author of a concept of separation of powers
What do you mean? Republic comes from the Latin Res Publica ('the public thing'). Plato's Republic was called
Πολιτεία/"Politeía", meaning "city-state governance")
De re publica (Latin: On the commonwealth, see below) is a dialogue on Roman politics by Cicero, written in six books between 54 and 51 BC. It is written in the format of a Socratic dialogue in which Scipio Africanus Minor (who had died a few decades before Cicero was born, several centuries after Socrates' death) takes the role of a wise old man -- an obligatory part for the genre. Cicero's treatise was politically controversial: by choosing the format of a philosophical dialogue he avoided naming his political adversaries directly. Cicero employed various speakers to raise differing opinions in an attempt to make it more difficult for these adversaries to take him to task on what he had written.
What do you mean?
Regardless,
Roman authors would also use the word res publica in the sense of the era when Rome was governed as a republic, that is the era between the Roman Kingdom and the Roman Empire. So in this case res publica does distinctly not refer to the Roman Empire, but to what is generally described as the Roman Republic.
Plato's Republic was a kind of aristocracy, and republicanism is an attempt to put a positive spin on oligarchy. It is rule by the few attempting to claim the legitimacy of rule by the many.
As for the idea of "mixed government", according to Wolin, America is a republic in the sense that there is a continuing unresolved conflict of interest between the many and the few. The way that inverted totalitarianism deals with this conflict of interest is through managed democracy. A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive / The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion -- The Three Johns
