{"id":16465,"date":"2016-02-26T17:28:56","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T22:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16465"},"modified":"2016-02-27T10:20:15","modified_gmt":"2016-02-27T15:20:15","slug":"on-the-original-meaning-of-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16465","title":{"rendered":"on the original meaning of democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

We call ourselves a democracy and a republic. There’s a current right-wing talking point that we are only the latter, but I’ve argued<\/a> that this claim\u00a0deviates\u00a0from a long bipartisan consensus that the US aspires to be\u00a0a democratic republic. But what do these two terms\u00a0mean<\/em>?<\/p>\n

This definitional\u00a0question is challenging because the words\u00a0come, respectively, from Greek and Latin, and they were coined to name specific regimes that had lots of eccentric features (huge juries in Athens; a host of executive officials in Rome) that no one considers definitive. The words have subsequently been used by many writers in many languages to name a wide variety of\u00a0regimes–and\u00a0sometimes as terms of abuse.<\/p>\n

For instance, a “republic” presumably must name a regime that has something in common with the original, the ancient Roman res publica. <\/em>One defining feature of the Roman republic was simply that it wasn’t a monarchy. Thus people who want to remove Queen Elizabeth II as the titular monarch of Australia (or Britain) call themselves “republicans.” Their proposal would change virtually nothing about the power structure; it would be almost entirely symbolic. But\u00a0they have precedent for calling a regime without a monarch a “republic.”<\/p>\n

In a very different vein, Jefferson defined a republic<\/a>\u00a0“purely and simply” as “government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and …\u00a0every 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.” For Jefferson, a “republic” is what others would call a direct and participatory democracy. Yet the original\u00a0Roman republic was\u00a0composed of legislative bodies and officers who represented various classes and interests. Some were elected and others were appointed. All were limited by various laws (albeit unstably so). Thus, for some, a republic is\u00a0a government\u00a0that avoids<\/em> direct and participatory democratic elements.<\/p>\n

Still other writers have noticed\u00a0the ancient Roman penchant for civic duty and public service and have used the word “republic” for a regime that demands a great deal from its citizens and that encourages public engagement\u00a0as a positive good. It is an alternative to the kind of liberalism that favors\u00a0individual\u00a0rights.\u00a0Meanwhile,\u00a0another tradition takes seriously the etymology–“res publica<\/em>” means “public thing [or good]”–and translates the phrase as\u00a0“commonwealth.” A\u00a0“commonwealth,” in turn, could mean all\u00a0the\u00a0things that are commonly owned by the people. And if the people’s wealth extends to the land,\u00a0then a certain kind of agrarian socialism emerges as the definition of republicanism.<\/p>\n

That’s all about “republic,” but I’d like to address the term “democracy,” relying on a fascinating article by\u00a0Josiah Ober.* Ober notes that if the Greeks had\u00a0wanted a word that meant rule of the many<\/em> (or the common people), they would have used pollo-<\/em> as the suffix<\/span> prefix. To name a regime in which all<\/em> rule, they could have used “panocracy<\/em>.” If they had wanted to emphasize the equality<\/em> of all, they would have used iso-<\/em>. For instance, isegoria<\/em> meant\u00a0an equal right to participate in deliberations in the agora. But they chose demo-<\/em>, which refers to the whole people as one, without sociological distinctions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if they had wanted to specify\u00a0who governed, in the sense of casting votes or holding offices, they would have used the suffix -archy. A monarchy has one ruler, an oligarchy has a few, and anarchies have none. The suffix -kratia<\/em>\u00a0is different. It does not imply an office or action but rather power, in the sense of capacity or an ability to make things happen.<\/p>\n

Thus, in its original form, a democracy is a regime in which the whole population has\u00a0the power to make things together. By the way, this\u00a0definition comes close to uses of the word “republic”\u00a0that emphasize the public’s role in making the res publica<\/em>. So perhaps “democracy” means “republic” after all.<\/p>\n

*Josiah Ober, “The Original Meaning of ‘Democacy’: Capacity to Do Things, Not Majority Rule,” Constellations, vol. 15, no. 1 (2008)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We call ourselves a democracy and a republic. There’s a current right-wing talking point that we are only the latter, but I’ve argued that this claim\u00a0deviates\u00a0from a long bipartisan consensus that the US aspires to be\u00a0a democratic republic. But what do these two terms\u00a0mean? This definitional\u00a0question is challenging because the words\u00a0come, respectively, from Greek and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civic-theory","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16465"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16471,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16465\/revisions\/16471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}