A classic view of government presumes that its job is to make and enforce laws. If you break the law, agents of the government are allowed (with due process) to force you, if necessary at gun point, to surrender property, liberty, or even life. On this view, government is different in kind from other institutions. Further, it ought to be kept sharply distinct. Blurring the border around the government is dangerous because too much coziness between government officials and other people encourages corruption (which is the private exploitation of governmental power), and because other institutions would be distorted if they were too closely implicated with government.

This theory of government supports a range of reforms and safeguards. Separation of church and state keeps the government from remaking religion in its image. Ethics rules are often about preventing exchanges of goods and favors between government and private persons. Open meeting laws suggest that the government should not consult with members of the public except in public, where the interaction can be monitored.

An entirely different view shifts from government to governance. Here, the idea is that we govern by shaping our common world. Law is one instrument for that, but law is not sharply different from norms and incentives. Law isn’t merely executed by government; without broad and active popular support, it becomes a dead letter. Besides, government is not unitary. It comes in layers and separate offices and agencies. No part of government monopolizes any kind of power. In the end, government is a bunch of people, and they are not sharply distinguishable from other people. They usually wear several “hats” (legislator and parent, for example). Public employees appropriately act as organizers and entrepreneurs within agencies and routinely cross the line between government and non-government to get things done.

According to this view, the narrow definition of government is analytically unhelpful and encourages the wrong kind of reforms. Far from driving a wedge between government and society, we should encourage porous borders and collaboration. Public officials should learn to form partnerships and should support civic groups. AmeriCorps lets people work for a time as quasi-public employees so that they can take a private perspective into the government and vice-versa. Instead of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) that erects barriers whenever federal agencies wish to hold a meeting, we should enact what Lisa Bingham proposes: a Collaborative Governance Act that “authorize[s] agencies to use public participation and collaboration much differently, much more, and a lot earlier in the policy process.”

Government versus governance raises significant practical, definitional, and normative issues.

I probably spend 10-15 hours a week on the phone, and I like to do things that allow me to concentrate on the conversation–activities that fill enough of my brain that I am not tempted by distractions like email. My latest habit is to zoom to some exotic place on the Google world map, open the Streetview function, and go walking or driving along.

Most of the world’s poor cities don’t have Streetview, although they do have lots of “panoramio” photos, which are almost as good. It’s no surprise that you can’t go for a virtual Google tour of Tehran or Pyongyang. A few cities in the Global North, such as Athens, seem strangely missing. But cities as diverse as São Paolo, Cape Town, Sydney, and London can be fully explored. One can also meander down country roads in France or move back and forth across the US-Mexico border without slowing for immigration.

Sometimes ghostly human figures appear close up. Sometimes you follow a car or truck for a few blocks. Often streets are eerily empty. Every place is still.

The zoom function is logarithmic, I think: each step moves you ten times closer. That suggests that the world is far smaller than it really is. You can walk around Beijing for a while in Streetview, get bored of its ranks of concrete high-rises, zoom out a few notches, and plunge back down in Tokyo’s Ginza district as if the two cities were neighbors. Google Streetview also makes the world somewhat more uniform than it really is. Downtown areas of big cities in Brazil, Australia, and Europe all look fairly similar. I suspect if one could hear and smell those locations, feel the air, and see the sky, they would seem dramatically different.

In Colorado, fiscal policy is strongly constrained by a referendum called the Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights (Tabor). A lawsuit has been filed to overturn Tabor on the grounds that Colorado is no longer a republic if an elected legislature cannot determine the budget. Not being a republic would violate the US Constitution, Article 4, clause 1: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government …”

I believe that Tabor is bad policy, and it’s generally wiser for a legislature to determine a budget than for voters to make fiscal policy through the ballot box, because the legislative process requires a comprehensive, deliberative look at all revenues and expenses, whereas a referendum can enact inconsistent requirements. (See: California.) But I don’t believe a court should declare that Colorado isn’t a “republic”; the word is simply too contested.

The Romans coined res publica to describe their own regime from ca. 509-59 BCE. Ever since, people have examined the Romans’ complex and evolving constitution and have seen various aspects of it as salient. They have defined a “republic” accordingly. For example:

1. Sometimes it just means an alternative to a monarchy, for the Roman Republic legendarily originated with the overthrow of a king and ended with the rise of the Caesars. Removing a monarch can be a revolutionary moment–or it can be symbolic. In countries like Canada and Australia, “republicans” are proponents of removing Elizabeth II as the titular sovereign. The effects on power and policy would be very modest. By this definition, Colorado is certainly republican because it has no king or queen.

2. We might say that there is something specifically problematic about a monarchy, even if the ruler is benign or his powers have been sharply limited by other institutions. The monarch’s power is arbitrary because it is not rooted in something like the consent of the governed. “Republicanism” has sometimes been defined as non-domination, and even constitutional monarchies are perhaps tainted by some degree of domination because the sovereign inherits her office. Again, by this definition, Colorado is republican.

3. The etymology of the word is “public thing [res],” perhaps better translated as “public property” or “commonwealth.” That marks an important distinction. The United Kingdom is highly democratic; almost all power is vested in a directly elected, unicameral legislature, which controls the nation’s laws and institutions. But in theory, those institutions belong to the crown. It is the Royal Navy, Her Majesty’s Prison Service, and the Royal Mail, Ltd. When Oliver Cromwell  monopolized power, “By the Grace of God and Republic, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland,” the nation was much less democratic than it is now, but its laws and institutions were seen as public property. Cromwell governed but did not own the navy, the courts, etc. Similarly, a communist state may claim to be a “people’s republic” because the nation’s goods are publicly owned (even if they are managed by tyrants). By this definition, Colorado is clearly republican.

4. The Roman Republic had elected officials, such as Tribunes, as well as hereditary officials, like Senators. Laws were made by direct popular votes and by small legislative bodies. In short, Rome depended on limited popular sovereignty–in contrast to a pure democracy, where the people would assemble and vote on everything. This is the distinction at the heart of the Colorado lawsuit, which asserts that the state has become a democracy and not a republic. But Colorado, like ancient Rome, has a mix of offices and processes, including a legislature that retains power and an independent judiciary. Maybe the state is a little less republican than it used to be, but it’s hard to see how it has crossed a bright line.

5. Republican Romans believed in civic duty. Gentlemen were expected to serve in the army and to take part arduously in public life as orators and leaders. The ideal was the soldier/statesman. Civic life was held in  much higher regard than private life or market exchange. It could even be called sacred, because religion and government were deeply enmeshed. When Renaissance Italian city states revived republicanism, they were mainly interested in republican virtues. In contrast, today’s liberal regimes prize what Benjamin Constant called “the liberty of the moderns”: the freedom to live one’s own life as independently as possible. So one definition of republicanism is a culture or political order that expects a lot from its citizens. Civic participation as an intrinsic good, not a cost. By this definition, Colorado is not very republican, but neither are the other states or the United States as a whole.