Republicanism

Republicanism (Latin-French-New Latin: from res publica ["public cause" or "commonwealth"]) is a direction of political philosophy that emerged from state theory, for which the democratic will is not based - as in political liberalism - on an aggregation of pre-political, plural and individual interests, but is actively shaped in a public process based on civic virtues.

Principles

Important to republicanism is the expansion of the inclusive possibilities of the people and individuals by electing (legitimizing) those in power for a predetermined, irrevocable period of time at periodic intervals by the people or their representatives so that sovereignty is not reduced to the brief process of voting (interactive democratic theory). Politics is the space for public decision-making.

The active political realist (Aktivbürger) seems to be an embodiment of the Enlightenment ideal of the responsible citizen as well as of the republican idea of the sense of community (lat. Sensus communis) citoyen.

Republicans assume a (legal) human being in the structure of legal and state order, as bearer of rights and duties as sovereignty, an association of the entire citizenry, which first forms the overall will and later, according to aspects directed to the general welfare, a common will (volonté générale), which also has to take into account intellectual participation of minorities and non-participants.

Central features are the rule of the many and the pursuit of the good of all while respecting a protected private sphere. Continuous freedom of will and expression are elementary in republican constitutions, but they are also subject to the danger that the participation of the people is not taken into account to a sufficient degree if the rulers do not care for the welfare of all citizens, but only for their own or that of individual minorities. However, minorities can also be disenfranchised altogether under republicanism as a democratic side effect. The curtailment of liberal rights occurs when the majority expects a benefit, e.g. more security, as a result.

If the people are given a growing say in governmental decisions, consensus becomes more difficult; if lawmaking is done only by specially elected officials, those representatives are granted such great power that there is a danger of quasi-dictatorship; unbridled liberalism carries the threat of oligarchy.

Republicanism versus liberalism

Republicanism appears in various forms and has evolved throughout history. Republicanism assumes that the individual is fundamentally a citizen who is willing to participate, oriented towards solidarity and determined by reason. On the part of liberalism and the representative democracy movement, republicanism is criticised for its high expectations of rationality and of the citizen's involvement in politics.

According to another view, republicanism and liberalism are not mutually exclusive, but differentiate themselves in concise distinguishing characteristics.

Republicanism believes in the socio-moral capacities of citizens and favours the optimistic ideology of participatory, grassroots democracy based on citizen action. In this, citizens and representatives of the people (or interest groups, parties, associations and state bodies) communicate with each other in the interest of the general public and submit proposals in a participatory manner in order to have a decisive influence on the implementation of policy.

Political liberalism broadly represents an elite-oriented idea of democracy, which entrusts elected representatives, based on the division of labor, with the political formulation of decisions with the determination to refine the will of the people and citizens, which is judged to be insufficiently reasonable, into an undistorted overall interest in a community.

Republicanism is closely related to the design of communitarianism, civil or civic society, associative and deliberative democracy.

A continuation of political liberalism can be seen in the factually anthropological, pluralistic theory of democracy, whereby here the political-moral competence of the citizen asserted in republicanism is doubted.

History of Republicanism

Groups that promoted republicanism developed out of an opposition to monarchies (especially any form of hereditary law) as well as an advocacy of the bourgeois constitutional movement, and existed in isolated instances even before the idea of republican forms of government was implemented. When states were finally formed on the model of a republic and the people became involved in the decision-making process of the political community, their goals were increasingly adopted by socialist parties on the one hand and popular parties of the center right on the other; both directions characterize features of the so-called modern parties that have unfolded in modern times. Parliamentary democratic republics practice parliamentarism or a presidential system.

Vaishali (today: Indian state of Bihar) was the first republic in the world, which was structured similarly to the Greek ones founded later. In antiquity, the writing of history is anchored, for example in Tacitus, in his own political and ideological position, a deeply rooted republicanism and aristocratism, founded in the concern for the values of the Roman idea of the state, which was threatened in the autocracy. Mixed constitutions developed, which term refers to a constitution that mixes elements from two or more other types of state forms (for example, democracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, etc.) and thus creates a new form of state. Theories to this effect were already developed in antiquity: for example, by Herodotus, Aristotle (as in his Politie), Plato, Polybios, etc., but also in the more recent past (see, among others, Montesquieu's mixed constitution based on powers). Helvidius Priscus, like his father-in-law Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus, also enjoyed renown for his passionate and courageous republicanism. Plato, for example, in his work Nomoi ("The Laws") dealt extensively in dialogue form with a state to be aspired to, which also took into account state constitutions, which historical models can also already be found implemented in Argos, Messenia, Sparta, Persia and Athens. In the democratic, polisnormed city-states of ancient Greece, the citizen was formed, also through Aristotle's works, who could directly intervene in the political events of his state as a sovereign member of the citizenry through elections. A system of constitutional development designed by Aristotle in the 4th century BC, based on actual developments in ancient Greece, is known as the cycle of constitutions. However, the voting at that time was not done by people as individuals, but as participants of the demos who were guided by the will of the majority. This time-honoured form of republicanism was, however, burdened with the serious defect that only free men or patricians were counted in the demos and that general equality or freedom of the people as a whole was irrelevant.