Basic political words (including the word “political”) tend to be appropriated by diverse movements and parties over time, which causes them to accumulate diverse and even opposite meanings. “Liberal” is a great example.
Another example is “republic,” which is now millennia old and appears in the official names of major parties as well as 110 sovereign states (by my count), ranging from the Laos People’s Democratic Republic to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and including such odd couples as both of the Koreas.
Some would say that any real republic is a regime with a popular or majoritarian element that is limited by checks and balances and restraints on the powers of government. These limits distinguish it from a democracy. That usage is not wrong, but it doesn’t necessarily track the terminology of the US founders. For instance, Jefferson defined a republic as a “government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and … every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens.” As the image shows, many of Jefferson’s contemporaries agreed that a republic was a democracy.
For others, a republic is a system in which the people own and control the most important goods. That is why communist states have generally named themselves republics. One justification may be etymology. The Latin phrase res publica means the public’s thing (or good, or wealth, or interest). Thus, if you believe that things like factories and farms should be public property, you may be inclined to use the word “republic.” In addition, the French revolution has often inspired communists and other left radicals. That revolution called itself “republican.” There is also a less prominent tradition of radical commonwealth thought in English; and “commonwealth” is a direct translation of res publica.
For some political theorists of the last 30 years (e.g., Philip Pettit, Ian Shapiro) republicanism means opposition to domination, which is arbitrary power over others. A republic is a regime that successfully combats domination, and modern republicans debate the necessary and ideal tools for that end. Rule of law, popular participation and responsive government, civil liberties, and checks and balances are among the options.
A different school of modern theorists see a republic as a regime that expects a particularly high degree of virtue from its citizens. For instance, Hannah Arendt defines a republic as a community that allows and expects participants to display civic virtues in public forums.
Until recently, I would have held onto one fixed point. I would have proposed that any definition of republic should cover the regime that governed Rome between the overthrow of the kings and the reign of emperor Augustus and his successors, because the word first arose to name that system. In analyzing the Roman republic, we might prefer to emphasize its appreciation of civic virtues, its empowered populace, its mixed constitution with limited popular power, its defense of private rights, its public property (the forum, the army), or its commitment to rule of law and other protections against domination (for free men)–but one way or another, we would have to tie our definition to the ancient regime. And a monarchy would be incompatible with a republic, since the Roman republic is what we call the interlude between the era of kings and that of emperors. Today, most of the countries that do not call themselves republics are monarchies.
But then I read Anthony Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome (Harvard, 2015). Kaldellis shows that almost all Romans believed that their republic persisted under the emperors. The structure of its government changed, but Rome remained a republic–indeed, until 1453. To call a limited period of Roman history “the republic” is to impose modern terminology on the past.
I suspect that one reason that many moderns have believed that the emperors ended the Roman republic is Tacitus. He is a superb author, enormously valuable and timely, but he does have an ax to grind. As a senator and a member the hereditary senatorial class, Tacitus views the emperors’ usurpation of the Senate’s powers as a fundamental blow to liberty. In modern times, his account has been a powerful inspiration for anyone who wants to defend representative legislatures against tyrants. But the Roman senate was never representative; it was oligarchical. Other Romans could disagree with Tacitus that weakening the Senate really undermined the republic. For many of them, the defining feature of a republic (per Kaldellis) was its coherence as a community. Some Romans viewed emperors as good guardians of their community, in which case the republic could thrive under Augustus or his successors. Their main concern was whether a given monarch really served the public good; if not, he was illegitimate.
The conclusion, for me, is that “republic” can mean many different things, and no one should assert that it has only one true meaning. I am interested in anti-domination and civic virtue and prefer to use the word “republican” for combinations of those ideas. But mainly, one should define and clarify one’s terms.
See also: do we live in a republic or a democracy?; civic republicanism in medieval Italy: the Lucignano council frescoes; The French Republic denounces the French State; citizens against domination; James Madison in favor of majority rule etc.
From Harry Boyte by email, July 4, 2026
The topic of Peter Levine’s civic blog post, “What ‘republic’ means, revisited,” May 5, 2022, is worth revisiting once again in this anniversary year of the American experiment. Levine, a leading civic blogger, makes many important points but in my view neglects the most important meaning of republic. With appreciation for his raising the topic, I want to expand on this point.
In his post Levine describes several meanings of republic, ranging from a government with popular or majoritarian elements, checks and balances, and restraints on government power to recent political theorists like Ian Shapiro who hold that a republic gives special attention to opposing domination and others like Hannah Arendt who insist that republics are regimes whose citizens display civic virtue. Such definitions are useful to recall, but there is another, distinctively American view of “republic” as popular or republican government in sustained relationship with citizens, civic institutions, and self-organized citizen effort joined for the common good. This view of “republic” meant “commonwealth,” a term used interchangeably at the nation’s founding. And it is crucial to recall for our contemporary predicament.
When Benjamin Franklin left the constitutional hall on the last day of the convention in 1787 a friend asked him, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” According to the notes of James McHenry, a constitutional delegate from Maryland, he replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Franklin frequently used the term “commonwealth” to refer to republic. He was involved in the deliberations which declared his state, Pennsylvania to be a commonwealth. More broadly, Franklin’s civic commitments over decades, often through the Leather Apron club of artisans, shopkeepers, working men with “leather aprons he organized in 1727, produced a library, a post office, a school for young Black and poor children, a voluntary fire department, a hospital and the University of Pennsylvania, among other “commons.” He became head of the largest anti-slavery organization. He was a civic role model for the nation.
Thus it is worth noting that Franklin’s phrase, “if you can keep it” certainly entailed the idea that a successful republic requires a “public,” a citizenry and civic institutions able to hold government accountable, provide a constant flow of public-spirited civil servants, and to undertake a variety of other public tasks. Such public work was sometimes in partnership with government, sometimes independent. Franklin understood that as citizens undertake public work they become a public.
The public work approach, expressed in work and workplaces as well as communities, dramatically expands understandings of democracy and citizenship. It can deepen the civic capacities of communities and the whole society.
Other founders of the nation also believed that commonwealth was a republic with civic dimensions not self-evidently present in the idea of government along. John Adams proposed that every state should be called a commonwealth (four, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Kentucky enshrined the term in their constitutions). Through American history commonwealth has been associated with the idea of democracy as a way of life not simply elections. In a republican commonwealth citizens create and sustain “the commons,” public goods like schools, infrastructure, libraries and local economies. More, the vision of commonwealth or cooperative commonwealth has animated pluralist democratic movements, from the struggle of Black American for 40 acres and a mule after the Civil War to the Knights of Labor and farmer and labor movements of the Great Depression. I glimpsed its revival in the spirit and language of the civil rights movement when I worked as a field secretary for Martin Luther King’s organization.
The civic dimension of commonwealth frames government not as a top-down ruling entity, but as a catalytic partnership dedicated to the “common well-being.” It embraces professional and expert knowledge but maintains that ordinary citizens and local community wisdom should inform and shape decision-making. It rejects the idea that public matters should be handed over to technocrats or distant bureaucracies and sees good governance as close to the people.
In a civic commonwealth citizens are civic producers not simply consumers of government largess. A commonwealth calls on citizens to co-create and sustain the civic structures of everyday life through active participation, labor, and community-building. Rooted in the Latin concept of res publica (the “public thing”), its etymology is closely tied to republic. Its civic core prioritizes public welfare and shared benefit over purely individualistic or private interests. It asserts that the collective prosperity of society, Thriving Together, is the ultimate measure of successful governance.
Commonwealth republican ideas are reemerging in the transdisciplinary field called “Civic Studies,” which has led to more than a dozen majors and minors in higher education, a field Levine helped to co-found. They are themes of scholarship, discussion, and debate in the Civic Scholars Council of Braver Angels, the nation’s largest group focused on depolarization. Braver Angels has recently taken up courageous citizenship as its central theme and proposed culture change to make it an honored norm across the society and has developed initiatives like Citizen-Led Solutions, aimed at supporting and catalyzing local citizen action and the odea that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” the words of a civil rights song.
The National Civic League, the largest organization dedicated to productive partnership between citizens and government sponsors an annual “All American Cities Award” which honors 10 communities each year. Its criteria include strong public work practices and civic infrastructure, bringing citizens and government together in generative partnerships.
In a time of deep demoralization, division, and uncertainty about the future, the idea of republic as a civic commonwealth returns us to the great insight of our nation’s founding, that “we the people” create government for our purposes, not the other way around. It has potential to break partisan gridlock. It points beyond privatized culture based on a scarcity mentality and do your own thing individualism to a future in which everyone flourishes together.