However, not all these states are republics in the sense of having elected governments. This being said, 159 of the world’s sovereign states use the word “republic’ as part of their official names. These events shaped the term to designate governments in which the leader is periodically appointed under a constitution.Įven with its democratic implication, the term republic has been claimed by states whose leadership could be described as military dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. These include the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The definition of a republic began shifting during the 17th and 18th centuries, with growing resistance to absolutist regimes and a series of revolutions. It read, “the rightly ordered government of a number of families, and of those things which are their common concern, by a sovereign power.” Republic could encompass not only democratic states but also oligarchies, aristocracies, and monarchies.įrench philosopher Jean Bodin wrote a definition of the republic in his Six Books of the Commonwealth in 1576. The 15 individual nations under Soviet influence were considered a group of “Soviet Socialist Republics.” History of the Republicīefore the 1600s, the term republic was used to designate any state that was not an authoritarian regime. The Soviet Union is another example of sub-sovereign republics. states is guaranteed a “Republican form of Government” by the United States Constitution. In some cases, however, sub-sovereign states are declared republican in nature. Most often, a republic is a single sovereign state. Direct democracies and republics are considered the opposite of dictatorships. Despite this, many modern democracies are by and large republics. A republic is defined as “a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives.” A direct democracy allows citizens to govern the state themselves, no through representatives. Republics differ from direct democracies.
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