this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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No, republic just means that the role of head of state isn't hereditary. Lots of dictatorships are republics, some democracies are as well. The actual political system of the USA is representative democracy (in theory at least).
The fact that these terms are so muddled in the minds of the average American is completely deliberate, because it makes it so much easier for them to subvert US democracy when people have been told that the US is not one.
There are a couple definitions. One I’ve heard most is a republic has a citizen as head of state, which disqualifies both monarchies and military dictatorships. Another is that the head of state is elected or nominated, which disqualifies non-representative systems entirely.
I've always heard that a Republic is one where power rests in the people and is exercised through their representatives. So more the latter than the former.
And it's convoluted because governments are weird. For example, the UK is not a Republic, it's a monarchy, though it's effectively a Republic because the monarch has only symbolic power. To change the UK to a Republic would only require changing the position of head of state to an elected or appointed position subject to Parliament or the people (either one), which is largely a name change. On the flipside, Iran is a Republic, and it's certainly less representative of the will of the people than the UK.
So using terms like "Republic" or "Democracy" by themselves isn't interesting, what's interesting is what level of control the people have over their own government.
republic /rɪˈpʌblɪk/ noun a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
from one of those Oxford ones