List of the multiple definitions of republic
From Wikinfo
The term republic has had a haphazard and confusing history of definition through the centuries. This is a record of all the various definitions.
- Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, editors: Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, 2nd ed, HarperCollins College Publishers, l995.
- Republic—A form of government by the people that includes the rule of law, a mixed constitution, and the cultivation of an active and public-spirited citizenry. (pg 267)
- The Roman Republic, Michael Crawford, 2nd Edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978, 1992. pg 22-23.
- (Speaking about the Roman republic) "Two consuls instead of a king now stood each year at the head of the community; the assembly of adult males which elected them remained the same, as did the body of elders who advised them; this was the senate, composed in practice of former magistrates. Time and circustance produced various modifications in the three elements whose interplay was the Roman political system, including notably the creation of a large number of lesser magistrates; nothing altered the central fact of republican government, that it was the collective rule of an aristocracy, in principle and to a varying extent in practice dependent on the will of a popular assembly." (italics in original)
- This is defined under Classical definition of republic.
- (Speaking about the Roman republic) "Two consuls instead of a king now stood each year at the head of the community; the assembly of adult males which elected them remained the same, as did the body of elders who advised them; this was the senate, composed in practice of former magistrates. Time and circustance produced various modifications in the three elements whose interplay was the Roman political system, including notably the creation of a large number of lesser magistrates; nothing altered the central fact of republican government, that it was the collective rule of an aristocracy, in principle and to a varying extent in practice dependent on the will of a popular assembly." (italics in original)
- Oxford English Dictionary
- "any government without a king."
- This is the basis of the modern and common meaning of republic.
- "any government without a king."
- Websters New International Dictionary, Latest Unabridged, 2nd edition, 1925, 1950.
- 1. Commonweal; the state.
- 2. A state in which the sovereign power resides in a certain body of the people (the electorate), and is excercised by representatives elected by, and (in theory at least) responsible to, them; a commonwealth; also the form of government by which such a state is governed. The term republic is used to designate states differing widely in their constitution; as, the ancient Roman republic; which was originally an aristocracy under the control of the patrician class; the republics of ancient Greece and of modern Switzerland, democracies with the political power vested in all the citizens (who in the former consisted of a select class, in the later the whole body of freemen); the medieval Italian republics, which were limited oligarchies; the modern republics of the United States and France, which are essentially free democracies. Republics now often specifically implies such a free popular government in which there are no classes having any exclusive political priviledges and in which the electorate includes at least the great body of adult inhabitants (universal suffrage in most republics) under constitutional restrictions.
- This is defined under Democratic republics.
