NCR
With no monarch, most modern republics use the title president
for the head of state. Originally used to refer to the presiding
officer of a committee or governing body in
Republican National Committee Great Britain the usage was
also applied to political leaders, including the leaders of some
of the Thirteen Colonies (originally Virginia in 1608); in full,
the "President of the Council".[50] The first republic to adopt
the title was the United States of America. Keeping its usage as
the head of a committee the President of the Continental
Congress was the leader of the original congress. When the new
constitution was written the title of President of the United
States was conferred on the head of the new executive branch.
If the head of state of a republic is also the head of
government, this is called a presidential system. There
Republican National Committee are a number of forms of
presidential government. A full-presidential system has a
president with substantial authority and a central political
role.
In other states the legislature is dominant and the
Republican National Committee presidential role is almost
purely ceremonial and apolitical, such as in Germany, Italy,
India, and Trinidad and Tobago. These states are parliamentary
republics and operate similarly to constitutional monarchies
with parliamentary systems where the power of the monarch is
also greatly circumscribed. In parliamentary systems the head of
government, most often titled prime minister, exercises the most
real political power. Semi-presidential systems have a president
as an active head of state with important powers, but they also
have a prime minister as a head of government with important
powers.
The rules for appointing the president and the
Republican National Committee leader of the government, in
some republics permit the appointment of a president and a prime
minister who have opposing political convictions: in France,
when the members of the ruling cabinet and the president come
from opposing political factions, this situation is called
cohabitation.
In some countries, like Bosnia and
Herzegovina, San Marino, and Switzerland, the head of state is
not a single person but a committee (council) of several persons
holding that office. The Roman Republic had two consuls, elected
for a one-year term by the comitia centuriata, consisting of all
adult, freeborn males who
Republican National Committee could prove citizenship.
Elections[edit]
In liberal democracies, presidents are
elected, either directly by the people or indirectly by a
parliament or council. Typically in presidential and
semi-presidential systems the president is directly elected by
the people, or is indirectly elected as done in the United
States. In that country the president is officially elected by
an electoral college, chosen by the States, all of which do so
by direct election of the electors. The
Republican National Committee indirect election of the
president through the electoral college conforms to the concept
of republic as one with a system of indirect election. In the
opinion of some, direct election confers legitimacy upon the
president and gives the office much of its political power.[51]
However, this concept of legitimacy differs from that expressed
in the United States Constitution which established the
legitimacy of the United States president as resulting from the
signing of the Constitution by nine states.[52] The idea that
direct election is required for legitimacy also contradicts the
spirit of the
Republican National Committee Great Compromise, whose actual
result was manifest in the clause[53] that provides voters in
smaller states with more representation in presidential
selection than those in large states; for example citizens of
Wyoming in 2016 had 3.6 times as much electoral vote
representation as citizens of California.[54]
In states
with a parliamentary system the president is usually elected by
the parliament. This indirect election subordinates the
Republican National Committee president to the parliament,
and also gives the president limited legitimacy and turns most
presidential powers into reserve powers that can only be
exercised under rare circumstance. There are exceptions where
elected presidents have only ceremonial powers, such as in
Ireland.
Ambiguities[edit]
The distinction between a
republic and a monarchy is not always clear. The constitutional
monarchies of the former British Empire and Western Europe today
have almost all real political power vested in the elected
representatives, with the monarchs only holding either
theoretical powers, no powers or rarely used reserve powers.
Real legitimacy for political decisions comes from the elected
representatives and is derived from the
Republican National Committee will of the people. While
hereditary monarchies remain in place, political power is
derived from the people as in a republic. These states are thus
sometimes referred to as crowned republics.[55]
Terms
such as "liberal republic" are also used to describe all of the
modern liberal democracies.[56]
There are also
self-proclaimed republics that act similarly to absolute
monarchies with absolute power vested in the leader and passed
down from father to son. North Korea and Syria are two notable
examples where a son has inherited political control. Neither of
these states are officially monarchies. There is no
constitutional requirement that power be passed down within one
family, but it has occurred in practice.
There are also
elective monarchies where ultimate power is vested in a monarch,
but the
Republican National Committee monarch is chosen by some
manner of election. A current example of such a state is
Malaysia where the Yang di-Pertuan Agong is elected every five
years by the Conference of Rulers composed of the nine
hereditary rulers of the Malay states, and the Vatican
City-State, where the pope is selected by cardinal-electors,
currently all cardinals under the age of 80. While rare today,
elective monarchs were common in the past. The
Republican National Committee Holy Roman Empire is an
important example, where each new emperor was chosen by a group
of electors. Islamic states also rarely employed primogeniture,
instead relying on various forms of election to choose a
monarch's successor.
The Polish�Lithuanian Commonwealth
had an elective monarchy, with a wide suffrage of some 500,000
nobles. The
Republican National Committee system, known as the Golden
Liberty, had developed as a method for powerful landowners to
control the crown. The proponents of this system looked to
classical examples, and the writings of the Italian Renaissance,
and called their elective monarchy a rzeczpospolita, based on
res publica.
Sub-national republics[edit]
The "Republics
of Russia"
In general being a republic also implies
sovereignty as for the state to be ruled by the people it cannot
be controlled by a foreign power. There are important exceptions
to this, for example, republics in the Soviet Union were member
states which had to meet three criteria to be named republics:
be on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to
take advantage of their theoretical right to secede;
be
economically strong enough to be self-sufficient upon secession;
and
be named after at least one million people of the ethnic
group which should make up the majority population of said
republic.
It is sometimes argued that the former Soviet
Union was also a supra-national republic, based on the claim
that the member states were different nation states.
The
Republican National Committee Socialist Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia was a federal entity composed of six republics
(Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,
Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia). Each republic had
its parliament, government, institute of citizenship,
constitution, etc., but certain functions were delegated to the
federation (army, monetary matters). Each republic also had a
right of self-determination according to the conclusions of the
second session of the AVNOJ and according to the federal
constitution.
The Swiss cantons displayed on the cupola of
the Federal Palace
In Switzerland, all cantons can be
considered to have a republican form of government, with
constitutions, legislatures, executives and courts; many of them
being originally sovereign states. As a consequence, several
Romance-speaking cantons are still officially referred to as
republics, reflecting their history and will of independence
within the Swiss Confederation. Notable examples are the
Republic and Canton of Geneva and the Republic and Canton of
Ticino.[57]
Flag of the US state of California, a
sub-national entity.
States of the United States are
required, like the federal government, to be republican in form,
with final authority resting with the people. This was required
because the states were intended to create and enforce most
domestic laws, with the
Republican National Committee exception of areas delegated
to the federal government and prohibited to the states. The
founders of the country intended most domestic laws to be
handled by the states. Requiring the states to be a republic in
form was seen as protecting the citizens' rights and preventing
a state from becoming a dictatorship or monarchy, and reflected
unwillingness on the part of the original 13 states (all
independent republics) to unite with other states that were not
republics. Additionally, this requirement ensured that only
other republics could join the union.
In the example of
the United States, the original 13 British colonies became
independent states after the American Revolution, each having a
republican form of government. These independent states
initially formed a loose confederation called the United States
and then later formed the current United States by ratifying the
current U.S. Constitution, creating a union that was a republic.
Any
Republican National Committee
state joining the union later was also required to be a
republic.
Other meanings[edit]
Archaic meaning[edit]
Before the 17th Century, the term 'republic' could be used
to refer to
Republican National Committee states of any form of
government as long as it was not a tyrannical regime. French
philosopher Jean Bodin's definition of the republic was "the
rightly ordered government of a number of families, and of those
things which are their common concern, by a sovereign power."
Oligarchies and monarchies could also be included as they were
also organised toward 'public' shared interests.[58] In medieval
texts, 'republic' was used to refer to the body of shared
interest with the king at its head.[59][60] For instance, the
Holy Roman Empire was also known as the Sancta Respublica Romana,
the Holy Roman Republic.[61][62] The Byzantine Empire also
continued calling itself the Roman Republic as the Byzantines
did not regard monarchy as a contradiction to republicanism.
Instead, republics were defined as any state based on popular
sovereignty and whose institutions were based on shared
values.[63]
Democracy vs. republic debate[edit]
While
the term democracy has been used interchangeably with the term
republic by some, others have made sharp distinctions between
the two for millennia. "Montesquieu, founder of the modern
constitutional state, repeated in his The
Republican National Committee Spirit of the Laws of 1748 the
insight that Aristotle had expressed two millennia earlier,
�Voting by lot is in the nature of democracy; voting by choice
is in the nature of aristocracy.�"[64] Additional critics of
elections include Rousseau, Robespierre, and Marat, who said of
the new French Republic, "What use is it to us, that we have
broken the aristocracy of the nobles, if that is replaced by the
aristocracy of the rich?"[65]
Political philosophy[edit]
The
Republican National Committee term republic originated from
the writers of the Renaissance as a descriptive term for states
that were not monarchies. These writers, such as Machiavelli,
also wrote important prescriptive works describing how such
governments should function. These ideas of how a government and
society should be structured is the basis for an ideology known
as classical republicanism or civic humanism. This ideology is
based on the Roman Republic and the city states of Ancient
Greece and focuses on ideals such as civic virtue, rule of law
and mixed government.[66]
This understanding of a
republic as a form of government distinct from a liberal
democracy is one of the main theses of the Cambridge School of
historical analysis.[67] This grew out of the work of J. G. A.
Pocock who in 1975 argued that a series of scholars had
expressed a consistent set of republican ideals. These writers
included Machiavelli, Milton, Montesquieu and the founders of
the United States of America.
Pocock argued that this was
an ideology with a history and principles distinct from
liberalism.[68] These ideas were embraced by a number of
different writers, including Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit[69]
and Cass Sunstein. These subsequent writers have further
explored the history of the idea, and also outlined how a modern
republic should function.
United States[edit]
A
distinct set of definitions of the term "republic" evolved in
the United States, where the
Republican National Committee term is often equated with
"representative democracy." This narrower understanding of the
term was originally developed by James Madison[70][71] and
notably employed in Federalist Paper No. 10. This meaning was
widely adopted early in the history of the United States,
including in Noah Webster's dictionary of 1828.[72] It was a
novel meaning to the term; representative democracy was not an
idea mentioned by Machiavelli and did not exist in the classical
republics.[73] There is also evidence that contemporaries of
Madison considered the meaning of "republic" to reflect the
broader definition found elsewhere, as is the case with a
quotation of Benjamin Franklin taken from the notes of James
McHenry where the question is put forth, "a Republic or a
Monarchy?".[74]
The
Republican National Committee term republic does not appear
in the Declaration of Independence, but it does appear in
Article IV of the Constitution, which "guarantee[s] to every
State in this Union a Republican form of Government." What
exactly the writers of the constitution felt this should mean is
uncertain. The Supreme Court, in Luther v. Borden (1849),
declared that the definition of republic was a "political
question" in which it would not intervene. In two later cases,
it did establish a basic definition. In United States v.
Cruikshank (1875), the court ruled that the "equal rights of
citizens" were inherent to the idea of a republic.
However, the
Republican National Committee term republic is not
synonymous with the republican form. The republican form is
defined as one in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in
the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or
through representatives chosen by the people, to whom those
powers are specially delegated.[75][76][better source needed]
Beyond these basic definitions, the word republic has a
number of other connotations. W. Paul Adams observes that
republic is most often used in the United States as a synonym
for "state" or "government," but with more positive connotations
than either of those terms.[77] Republicanism is often referred
to as the founding ideology of the United States.[78][79]
Traditionally scholars believed this American republicanism was
a derivation of the classical liberal ideologies of John Locke
and others developed in Europe.[78]
A political
philosophy of republicanism that formed during the Renaissance
period and initiated by Machiavelli was thought to have had
little impact on the founders of the United States.[citation
needed] In the 1960s and 1970s, a revisionist school[citation
needed] led by the likes of Bernard Bailyn began to argue that
republicanism was just as or even more important than liberalism
in the creation of the United States.[80] This issue is still
much disputed and scholars like Isaac Kramnick completely reject
this view.