Republicanism

Based on Wikipedia: Republicanism

The Philosophy That Overthrew Kings

In 509 BCE, the Romans did something extraordinary. They expelled their king and swore they would never have another. The word they used for what came next—res publica, literally "the public thing"—would echo through two and a half millennia of political thought, inspiring revolutions, shaping constitutions, and defining what it means to be free.

This is the story of republicanism: not merely a preference for elected governments over hereditary monarchs, but a comprehensive philosophy about power, corruption, virtue, and the conditions under which human beings can truly govern themselves.

What Republicanism Actually Means

The word "republic" gets thrown around casually today, often meaning little more than "not a monarchy." But republicanism as a political philosophy is something far richer and more demanding.

At its core, republicanism rests on a radical premise: sovereignty—the ultimate authority to make decisions—belongs to the people and their chosen representatives, not to any king, emperor, or strongman who claims power by birthright or brute force.

But this is only the beginning. True republicanism demands active citizens, not passive subjects. It requires what the Romans called civic virtue—the willingness to subordinate personal interests to the common good. It insists on constant vigilance against corruption, which republicans see not merely as bribery or graft, but as any decay in the body politic that allows private interests to capture public power.

Republicans prize what they call a "mixed constitution"—a government that balances different elements to prevent any single faction from dominating. They believe in the rule of law: the idea that even the most powerful must answer to established principles, not merely to their own will.

And perhaps most distinctively, republicanism offers a particular understanding of freedom itself. This isn't simply the absence of interference in your life—what philosophers call "negative liberty." Republican freedom is freedom from domination. You're not truly free if someone else has the power to interfere with you arbitrarily, even if they happen not to exercise that power today. A benevolent master who treats his slaves kindly is still a master. A kind despot is still a despot.

The Science of Social Happiness

There's another way to understand republicanism that often gets overlooked. John Adams, the second president of the United States, called politics "the science of social happiness." For thinkers like Adams, republicanism wasn't primarily an ideology to be believed in, but a methodology to be applied.

This approach—visible in Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, in Adams's own writings, and in James Madison's contributions to the Federalist Papers—treats government as a problem to be solved through careful study of history and experimentation with institutional design. What forms of government have worked? Why did they fail when they did? How can we learn from the mistakes of the past?

This scientific republicanism is less interested in abstract principles than in practical results. It asks: given what we know about human nature and political history, what arrangements are most likely to produce stable, just, and prosperous societies?

Greek Beginnings

The intellectual foundations of republicanism stretch back to ancient Greece, though the Greeks themselves wouldn't have used the term. What they did have was the concept of politeia—which could mean constitution, form of government, or simply "the way we do politics here."

Plato, in his dialogue The Republic, argued that good government requires rulers of exceptional virtue—philosopher-kings who understand the true nature of justice and goodness. Until philosophers become kings, he warned, or until kings genuinely study philosophy, cities will never have rest from their troubles.

This might sound elitist, and in some ways it was. But Plato was grappling with a real problem: how do you ensure that those who hold power use it wisely? It's a question that has never gone away.

Aristotle took a more empirical approach. He studied the constitutions of over 150 Greek city-states, trying to understand what made some succeed and others fail. He identified three basic forms of government—rule by one (monarchy), rule by few (aristocracy), and rule by many (democracy)—and noted that each could decay into a corrupt version of itself: tyranny, oligarchy, or mob rule.

The solution, Aristotle suggested, was mixture. A government that combined elements of all three forms might avoid the characteristic vices of each.

Several Greek city-states, including Athens and Sparta, operated as what we might call classical republics, featuring extensive citizen participation in legislation and decision-making. Though it's worth noting that "citizen" was a narrow category—women, slaves, and foreigners were excluded. Ancient democracy was always democracy for some.

Rome: The Model Republic

It was Rome, however, that would become the touchstone for all subsequent republican thinking.

According to legend, the Roman Republic was born when Lucius Junius Brutus led a revolt against King Tarquin the Proud in 509 BCE. The immediate cause was a scandal—the king's son had raped a noblewoman named Lucretia—but the deeper issue was the arbitrary nature of royal power itself. Romans swore an oath never to allow kings in their city again, and for nearly five centuries, they kept that oath.

The Greek historian Polybius, writing in the second century BCE, offered the most influential analysis of why Rome's republican system worked so well. The secret, he argued, was balance.

The Roman constitution mixed monarchy (the consuls, two executive officers elected annually), aristocracy (the Senate, a council of leading citizens), and democracy (the popular assemblies where citizens voted on laws and elected officials). Each element checked the others. The consuls couldn't act without Senate approval for major decisions. The Senate couldn't ignore the assemblies. The assemblies couldn't override the consuls' veto power.

This arrangement, Polybius argued, gave Rome a stability that purely monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic states lacked. While other powers rose and fell, Rome grew until it dominated the entire Mediterranean world. The mixed constitution wasn't just philosophically elegant—it worked.

Cicero and the Twilight of the Republic

No figure better embodies both the ideals and the tragedy of Roman republicanism than Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Cicero was a "new man"—the first in his family to reach the consulship, Rome's highest office. He made his career through rhetorical brilliance and political skill, not noble birth. In his philosophical writings, particularly De re publica (On the Republic), he articulated a vision of the ideal state that would influence political thinkers for two thousand years.

But Cicero lived at a time when the Republic was dying. Powerful generals like Julius Caesar commanded the personal loyalty of their armies. Wealth had concentrated in fewer hands. The old civic virtues were eroding. Politicians increasingly resorted to violence and manipulation.

Cicero defended the Republic against its enemies—he exposed the conspiracy of Catiline, opposed Caesar's growing power, and denounced Mark Antony in a series of brilliant speeches. But he couldn't save what was already lost. After Caesar's assassination, Cicero was marked for death by the new triumvirate. Soldiers caught up with him as he tried to flee by sea.

According to Plutarch, Cicero stretched his neck from the litter and told his killers to strike. His head and hands were displayed on the speaker's platform in the Roman Forum—the very place where he had delivered his greatest orations in defense of republican liberty.

The Slow Death of Roman Freedom

The Roman Republic didn't end with a sudden collapse. It eroded gradually, through a series of compromises and exceptions, each of which seemed reasonable at the time.

The historian Tacitus, writing a century after the Republic's fall, offered a subtle analysis of how this happened. Augustus, the first emperor, was careful to preserve republican forms. He held republican offices—though several at once, which no one in the Republic would have done. He deferred to the Senate—while making sure it did what he wanted. The state was still called res publica. People still voted in assemblies. Nothing obvious had changed.

Yet everything had changed. Power had concentrated in one man's hands. The checks and balances that had prevented any individual from dominating the state had been quietly dismantled.

Tacitus posed a troubling question: were these powers given to Augustus because the people truly wanted to give them, or for other reasons—like gratitude for ending civil wars, or fear, or the prestige of his divine ancestor Julius Caesar? The distinction mattered. Power freely given by an informed citizenry might be legitimate. Power extracted through manipulation or inherited through divine claims was something else entirely.

In Tacitus's view, the Republic might have been saved even after Augustus's death in 14 CE. But when Tiberius succeeded him and consolidated his position, too many precedents had been set, too many principles compromised. The road back was closed.

Medieval and Renaissance Revival

For centuries after Rome's fall, republicanism as a political practice largely disappeared from Europe. Monarchies, feudal lords, and the Catholic Church dominated political life. The idea of citizens governing themselves seemed a relic of a lost age.

Yet republican ideas survived in texts—Cicero's writings, Polybius's histories, Aristotle's political works—preserved in monasteries and slowly rediscovered by medieval scholars. And in a few places, republican practice revived.

By the late Middle Ages, prosperous trading cities in Italy and northern Europe had developed forms of self-government that owed little to kings or emperors. Florence, Venice, and Genoa in Italy; the cities of the Hanseatic League in Germany and the Baltic—these merchant republics were small islands of self-rule in a sea of monarchies.

Renaissance thinkers drew on classical sources to explain and justify what these cities were doing. They developed what scholars call "classical republicanism" or "civic humanism"—a political philosophy that combined ancient wisdom with contemporary experience.

The key insight was that republics required virtuous citizens. A people who cared only for private gain, who shirked public duties, who let others do the work of governing—such a people couldn't maintain their freedom. Liberty demanded vigilance, participation, and a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the common good.

This was a demanding ideal. Renaissance republicans didn't think it could work everywhere. Most believed republics were possible only in small, urbanized city-states where citizens knew each other and could participate directly in public affairs. Large territories with scattered rural populations seemed to require monarchies.

Machiavelli: The Reluctant Monarchist

No Renaissance thinker has had a worse reputation or been more misunderstood than Niccolò Machiavelli.

He's remembered for The Prince, his handbook of ruthless political advice, which has made "Machiavellian" a byword for cynical manipulation. But Machiavelli was, at heart, a republican. His Discourses on Livy—a detailed commentary on the early books of the Roman historian Livy—is a profound meditation on what makes republics flourish or fail.

Machiavelli served the Florentine Republic as a diplomat and administrator. When the Medici family overthrew the republic in 1512, he was imprisoned and tortured before being exiled to his farm. He wrote The Prince partly as a bid to regain favor with his city's new masters—but his heart was never in monarchy.

In the Discourses, Machiavelli argued that well-ordered republics are more stable, more glorious, and more capable of adapting to circumstances than monarchies. They harness the wisdom of many minds rather than depending on the virtues of a single ruler. They can survive the death of leaders. They inspire citizens to fight for their country because the country genuinely belongs to them.

But Machiavelli was clear-eyed about the challenges republics face. They can become corrupt. Factions can tear them apart. They can be too slow to respond to crises. And sometimes—when a state has fallen so deep into corruption that ordinary republican remedies can't work—only a strong leader with near-absolute power can set things right.

That was the argument of The Prince: not that monarchy is better than republicanism, but that in certain dire circumstances, it might be the only way to create the conditions under which republicanism could eventually flourish.

England: Monarchy Tamed by Law

English republicanism developed differently. Rather than opposing monarchy outright, many English thinkers sought to constrain it.

Thomas More, author of Utopia and eventually a martyr for his Catholic faith, envisioned a society without private property where citizens devoted themselves to the common good. He didn't think England could or should abolish its monarchy—but he believed the king should be bound by law and custom, not free to rule arbitrarily.

This tradition of "constitutional monarchy" or "mixed government" would prove enormously influential. It suggested you could have the stability benefits of monarchy without the risks of tyranny, if you built robust enough checks and balances into the system.

The English Civil War of the 1640s tested these ideas dramatically. Parliament went to war against King Charles I, who believed in his divine right to rule. The king lost, was tried for treason, and was beheaded in 1649—an event that shocked Europe. For eleven years, England experimented with republican government before restoring the monarchy in 1660.

But the restored monarchy was different. The memory of what had happened to Charles I constrained his successors. When James II tried to rule without Parliament, he was overthrown in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 and replaced with monarchs who accepted parliamentary supremacy. England became, in effect, a crowned republic—a monarchy in name but increasingly governed by elected representatives.

The Dutch Experiment

The Dutch Republic offers another fascinating variation. The Netherlands won its independence from Spain in the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648), and the struggle left the Dutch deeply suspicious of monarchy.

Anti-monarchist pamphlets flooded the country. Writers like the brothers Johan and Peter de la Court argued that all monarchies were essentially illegitimate tyrannies—inherently prone to corruption and abuse. They weren't primarily attacking the Spanish kings they'd overthrown. Their real target was the position of Stadholder, an office held by the princes of Orange that threatened to evolve into a Dutch monarchy.

The Dutch proved that a republic could be a major power. Their small country became the wealthiest in Europe, dominated global trade, created a golden age of art and science, and defended its independence against much larger neighbors. It was proof of concept that republicanism could work on a significant scale.

Poland-Lithuania: A Noble Republic

One of Europe's largest states in the early modern period was also, in some sense, a republic—though of a peculiar kind.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had an elected monarch, but the nobility who did the electing worked systematically to keep royal power weak. They called their state the Rzeczpospolita—the Polish translation of res publica—and genuinely believed they were heirs to Roman republican traditions.

But this was republicanism for a narrow class. The citizens who participated in Polish self-government were the szlachta, the landed nobility—perhaps ten percent of the population. Peasants had no political rights. Towns were marginalized. The great magnates who owned vast estates wielded enormous influence.

Polish republicanism showed both the appeal and the limits of the classical model. It preserved remarkable liberties—for those who counted as citizens. It prevented tyranny—while allowing oligarchy. It kept the monarchy weak—sometimes too weak to defend the country against its enemies. Eventually, Poland's neighbors partitioned it out of existence entirely.

The American Experiment

The founders of the United States were steeped in republican thought. They read Cicero and Polybius, studied the history of Rome and the Italian city-states, debated the lessons of the Dutch and English experiences.

The American Revolution was explicitly a republican uprising against what the colonists saw as monarchical tyranny. The Declaration of Independence catalogued the king's offenses against their rights as free people. The Constitution they created was designed to embody republican principles: separation of powers, checks and balances, elected representatives, and a government of laws rather than men.

But the Americans also transformed republicanism. Classical republicans believed self-government was possible only in small, homogeneous communities where citizens could know each other and participate directly. How could republican principles work across a vast continent with millions of people?

James Madison's answer, laid out in Federalist No. 10, was counterintuitive. Size, he argued, was actually an advantage. In a small republic, a single faction could easily dominate. In a large republic with many different interests, factions would check each other. No single group could impose its will on everyone else. The diversity that seemed like a problem was actually the solution.

This was a theoretical breakthrough. It opened the possibility of republican government at scales the classical thinkers had thought impossible.

The French Revolution and Its Aftermath

If the American Revolution showed that republics could work on a continental scale, the French Revolution demonstrated both the power and the peril of republican ideals.

The revolutionaries of 1789 were inspired by both American example and classical precedent. They invoked Roman virtues, adopted Roman symbols, and dreamed of regenerating their nation through republican principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man proclaimed liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty.

But the French Revolution also showed how easily republican ideals could go wrong. The Terror of 1793-94 killed thousands in the name of virtue. Robespierre, who sent so many to the guillotine, was himself consumed by the machine he had helped create. The First French Republic gave way to Napoleon's empire, which gave way to restored monarchy, which gave way to another republic, which gave way to another empire.

France cycled through forms of government—republics, monarchies, empires—throughout the nineteenth century. It wouldn't establish a durable republic until the Third Republic, founded in 1870, which lasted until Nazi Germany conquered France in 1940.

Corsica: An Unlikely Laboratory

Before either the American or French revolutions, a small Mediterranean island served as an unlikely testing ground for Enlightenment political ideas.

Corsica, positioned between Italian, Spanish, and French spheres of influence, had a tradition of village democracy and exposure to diverse intellectual currents. In the 1720s, it began a series of rebellions against its ruler, the Italian city-state of Genoa.

At first, the rebels sought Spanish protection. When that failed, they established an independent Kingdom of Corsica with a written constitution—one of the earliest examples of constitutional monarchy based on Enlightenment principles.

When the monarchy seemed to have colluded with invaders, a more radical faction emerged under Pasquale Paoli. The constitution Paoli created in 1755 was remarkably progressive for its time, featuring separation of powers, elected representatives, and even—in some interpretations—voting rights for women.

The Corsican experiment was short-lived. France purchased the island from Genoa in 1768 and conquered it the following year. But for a brief moment, a small island in the Mediterranean had shown what Enlightenment republicanism might look like in practice.

One Corsican who grew up under the new French rule was a young man named Napoleon Bonaparte. He would carry republican ideals across Europe—though in forms that their originators might not have recognized.

Freedom as Non-Domination

This brings us back to where we started: the distinctive republican conception of liberty.

Modern philosophers often distinguish between "negative liberty" (freedom from interference) and "positive liberty" (freedom to achieve certain goals or states of being). Republican liberty is something else—what contemporary philosopher Philip Pettit calls "freedom as non-domination."

The difference is subtle but important. Imagine a slave whose master happens to be kind and never interferes with her. By the negative liberty standard, she's free—no one is actually preventing her from doing what she wants. But by the republican standard, she's unfree, because someone else has the power to interfere with her arbitrarily. She lives at another's discretion. Her apparent freedom could be revoked at any moment.

This is why republicans have always been suspicious of unchecked power, even benevolent unchecked power. A good king is still a threat to liberty because his goodness might not last, and because the mere fact of his arbitrary power corrupts the relationship between ruler and ruled. Citizens become courtiers, measuring their words, seeking favor, unable to speak and act as free people.

Republican freedom requires institutions that prevent domination: laws that bind the powerful, representation that gives citizens voice, checks and balances that prevent any single actor from accumulating too much power. It's not enough to be left alone. You must be secure in your independence—not dependent on anyone else's goodwill for your basic rights and freedoms.

The Challenge for Today

Republican ideas continue to shape political debate, though we don't always recognize them.

When people worry about the concentration of power in tech companies that can arbitrarily ban users or change the terms of service, they're expressing republican concerns about domination. When they argue for antitrust enforcement to prevent monopolies, they're applying republican logic. When they insist on due process, transparency, and accountability in government, they're invoking republican principles.

The classical republicans worried about corruption—the decay that occurs when private interests capture public power. That worry seems as relevant as ever in an age of lobbying, regulatory capture, and money in politics.

They worried about citizens losing their civic virtue—becoming so focused on private gain that they neglected public responsibilities. That worry resonates when voter turnout is low, civic knowledge has declined, and political engagement often reduces to angry posts on social media.

They believed that liberty required eternal vigilance. They knew that free institutions could be lost—had been lost, many times in history—and that each generation had to earn its freedom anew.

The story of republicanism is not a simple tale of progress. The Roman Republic fell. The Italian city-states were conquered or became oligarchies. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned. The French Republic devoured its children. Even successful republics like the United States have never fully lived up to their ideals.

But the republican tradition offers something valuable: a rigorous framework for thinking about power, freedom, and what self-government actually requires. It reminds us that liberty is not a gift that, once given, can be taken for granted. It's an achievement that must be constantly defended—not just against obvious tyrants, but against the slow erosion of the principles and practices that make freedom possible.

The Romans drove out their kings twenty-five centuries ago. The question of how free people can govern themselves, and what threatens their freedom, remains as urgent as ever.