Introduction: What Is Republicanism?

Introduction

Republicanism is a term with multiple, complex, and contested meanings. While Ireland, the United States, and France are all currently ruled by republican regimes, the term is used in very different ways and has distinct connotations in each place. It is therefore crucial that we begin by thinking about its meaning and engaging with some of the complexity surrounding it before we embark on a more detailed exploration of its history.

At the most basic level, republicanism is linked to a notion of self-government. For a political community, this means not being ruled by another state. The establishment of republican city-states in Italy during the Renaissance signalled the refusal of their citizens to be ruled as vassals of the Holy Roman Empire. The Dutch republic emerged after the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule. And the republic of the United States of America was established after the thirteen colonies declared independence from Britain.

Self-government applies not just to the state but also to its citizens. It means that individuals are subject only to laws to which they have consented, rather than being ruled by another's will. It is for this reason that, in common speech, republics - ruled as they are by and for their citizens - tend to be distinguished from monarchies. In the modern world, of course, most states are ruled by and for their citizens via a system of representation. In this context republics are distinguished from monarchies on account of whether the head of state is elected for a limited term of office or inherits the role for life.

The distinction between republics and monarchies is equally problematic when viewed historically. Take the following passage from the fragmentary work De republica by Marcus Tullius Cicero, the famous Roman statesman, philosopher, and political writer: 'a commonwealth [republic] (that is the concern of the people) then truly exists when its affairs are conducted well and justly, whether by a single king, or by a few aristocrats, or by the people as a whole.'1 For Cicero, then, republican government was simply good government, and republics and monarchies were not necessarily mutually exclusive.2 The eighteenth-century Genevan-born political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau expressed something very similar in a famous passage from his Social Contract:

I therefore give the name 'Republic' to every State that is governed by laws, no matter what the form of administration may be: for only in such a case does the public interest govern, and the res publica rank as a reality. Every legitimate government is republican.

In the accompanying footnote he continued:

I understand by this word, not merely an aristocracy or democracy, but generally any government directed by the general will, which is the law. To be legitimate, the government must be, not one with the Sovereign, but its minister. In such a case even a monarchy is a republic.3

While deliberately playing on the apparent contradiction inherent within this final statement, Rousseau's account indicates that the key to understanding this apparent paradox lies in the precise meaning of the term 'republic', which comes via etymology.

Defining the Republic

Government in the Public Interest

'Republic' comes from the Latin res publica, which means 'common thing' (res) or 'the common good'. On this account, a government or a state is deemed to be republican not because it adopts a particular form, but rather depending on its purpose or object. Republican government, on this reading, is a system in which the public good takes precedence over the private interests of those in positions of power. This idea harks back to Aristotle's typology of government, although of course Aristotle wrote in Greek, so his lexic was different (he was talking about politeia rather than res publica, which is in fact the Latin translation of the Greek concept).4 Aristotle argued that there were two fundamental criteria by which governments might be distinguished from one another. The first was the proportion of the population involved in ruling (the ruler could be one, a few, or the many); the second was whether the government was ultimately good or bad. Good forms of government were those in which the governing was conducted in the common interest and according to justice, while the perverted or bad forms operated in the interests of the ruler(s) alone.5 When combined, the two criteria produced six distinct types of government, as illustrated in Table 0.1 here:

Table 0.1 Aristotle's typology of government

If you set out the matter this way, it is easy to see how Aristotle's sense of good constitutional forms underpinned Cicero's later account of republican government.

Republic and Commonwealth

Just as the terms 'republic' and 'republicanism' are multivalent, so they are not the only ones used to describe the underlying idea; various associated or overlapping terms are also used. The main equivalent, in an anglophone context, is 'commonwealth'. In a strict sense 'commonwealth' is simply the anglicised version of the Latin res publica. 'Common' and publicus render effectively the same notion and, in this context at least, 'thing' (res) and 'wealth' or 'weal', are also nearly equivalent. While 'commonwealth' in English has generally been seen as a more benign term, not necessarily having the anti-monarchical connotations of 'republic', it has been used just as flexibly. 'Commonwealth and Free State' was the name given to the regime established in England after the execution of Charles I in 1649. In the aftermath of the regicide, England was ruled for just over ten years without a king or queen. Yet Elizabeth I's reign during the previous century was also characterised as a commonwealth; and, later, self-confessed 'Commonwealthmen' were keen to distance their position from anti-monarchism.6

The Ciceronian understanding of republican government as simply good government continued to be influential well into the eighteenth century, as the quotation from Rousseau makes clear. Yet from the fifteenth century on it was challenged by the emergence of a new way of thinking about republican government - one that paved the way for the modern dichotomy between republics and monarchies.

Republican Exclusivism

It was during the Italian Renaissance that this new understanding first emerged.7 James Hankins has labelled it 'republican exclusivism', since it presented republican government as the only legitimate form, on account of its being grounded in the will of the people.8 Advocates of this position rejected all forms of non-elective monarchy and all hereditary political privileges. While this new conception was popularised and spread beyond Italy during the sixteenth century, not least in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, it was in the course of the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century that the idea began to find practical expression. When the English executed their king, transforming the regime by severing it from its traditional monarchical form, several thinkers emphatically insisted that freedom could be preserved only by proscribing monarchy. Marchamont Nedham argued that all kings were in effect tyrants. Speaking of English people (many of whom were proving reluctant to accept the new regime), he insisted: 'Had they but once tasted the sweets of peace and liberty both together, they would soon be of the opinion of Herodotus and Demosthenes that there is no difference between king and tyrant and become as zealous as the ancient Romans were in defence of their freedom.'9 Similarly, a decade later, John Milton asserted: 'I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me, that a free Commonwealth without single person or house of lords, is by far the best government, if it can be had.'10 This new understanding of the nature of republican government by no means obscured the earlier Ciceronian conception completely. The restoration of monarchy in 1660 made the expression of republican exclusivism treasonous in England. Consequently, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the Ciceronian notion of a republic compatible with monarchy returned to the fore, particularly in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that exclusivist republicanism found a new momentum in the context of the revolutions of the late eighteenth century. Yet, while the age of revolution gave it the edge over the earlier Ciceronian conception, the precise definition of a republic was subtly transformed in the process. Among exclusivist republicans of the Italian Renaissance and English Revolution it was accepted that a key difference between a republic and...