Ahhh, confusion. Spurred by well meaning patriots, whose motives and actions I admire. BUt arguing about whether the U.S. is a democracy or a republic is just silly. James Madison invented the distinction out of whole cloth. The Greeks said “democracy” and those using Latin said “republic” to describe THE SAME THING–popular government. Popular government means the kind of government where the people–the popolo– have the right to participate in the government to a greater or lesser extent. To quote Robert Dahl in his book On Democracy, “You might wonder whether democracy and republic refer to fundamentally different types of constitutional systems. Or instead do the two words just reflect differences in the languages from which they came?” He goes on, “This distinction had no basis in prior history (prior to Madison): neither in Rome nor, for example in Venice … Indeed, the earlier republics all pretty much fit into Madison’s definition of a ‘democracy.’ What is more the two terms were used interchangeably in the United States during the eighteenth century.”
Remember that the classical example of democracy was Athens, a city state where membership in the polis was restricted to an aristocracy supported by slaves and Helots–hardly what we migth call a popular government today.
Dahl concludes that “the plain fact is that the words democracy and republic did not (despite Madison) designate differences in types of popular government. What they reflected, at the cost of later confusion, was a difference between Greek and Latin, the languages from which they came.”
Popular government=republic=democracy in the general sense. Technically, Madisonally, they can be differentiated, but so what.
March 8th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
This is a really interesting discussion to have in America because of the perceived importance of democracy to our form of government. And I think this post adds to the intrigue by making it an issue of interpretation rather than institutions. However, if we delve deeper into the writings of Madison (and others), namely the Constitutional Convention debates and the Federalist Papers we come to know the Madisonian distinction, if you will. His plan for the new government certainly didn’t rely on purely democratic principles to carry out the popular will. But what we miss a lot of time in trying to describe our form of government is the fact that Madison famously warned of the troubles of republics as well. I’ll let J.M explain for himself, “If we resort for a critertion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from th great body of the people…” (Fed. 39). We can see here that Madison concurrs with both Dahl and Prof. Simmons. But if republicanism is narrowly defined, what does that say about Madison and our constitution? Maybe some of the Anti-Federalists’ accusations of illiberalism are true. Our constitution is certainly not catagorically adherent to republican principles. If it were so we probably wouldn’t have Art.2 Sect. 2 cl. 2, “…and [the president] shall nominate, and by and with advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the supreme court, and all other officers of the United States…” Not to belabor the point, but it seems our government, although structured as a republic, may not be a true republic. We may instead have a wacky paricipatorily-aristocratic-democratic-monarchical-republican-federation. What do you think?