Talk:Republic

Image

The French article is not very good, but gives a very good Republic illustration: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9publique#/media/File:Daumier_R%C3%A9publique.jpg

Can someone add it to make the article more user-friendly? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2a01:e35:8a8d:fe80:5c12:b820:c771:bfe6 (talk • contribs)

Power obtained through autocracy?

Original text as the following. Why power within a republic could be obtained through autocracy? I don't believe it. The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited, but are attained through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.240.33.2 (talk • contribs)

"The term originates from the Latin translation of Greek word politeia."

This is unsupported by the source. The Marriam Webster entry does support the idea that "republic" is the english version of numerous other translations of "res publica", but not that the latin "res publica" originated from the greed "politeia".

Possible vandalism

I was reading the article and scrolled down to the bottom of the article, in the further reading section, and I saw a picture of "Thomas Corwins speech in senate Against the Mexican-American War" [[1]]. Well firstly, it doesn't contribute anything to this article. Secondly, even if the original editor thought that it had some meaning with the article, why would you put it under references? There is no need to request semi-protection as this was quite possibly a minor case of vandalism, and the original editor thought that it was funny to hide nonsense under references because no one reads them.

Светозар Милетић (talk) 17:36, 27 April 2022 (UTC) Svetozar Miletic

Map styling

Perhaps the map would be clearer if it deemphasizes the minor differences between types of republics by using shades of the same color for republics, and shades of the same color for autocracies? For example, a map could use this color scheme:

System of Government	Most power allocated by:	Majority of power resides in:	Modern Governments
Democracy	Sortition	People	None
Hybrid			None
Republic	Elections	Aristocracy	see: Democracy Index
Hybrid
Autocracy	Might (e.g. coup)	Small inner circle (Dictator, Monarch, General(s), One-party state leadership)
Disputed

Superb Owl (talk) 23:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Republic vs Democracy

There seems to be two competing definitions of what a republic is and ultimately rests on "people choose representatives through elections". This may be confusing because that is literally the definition of an indirect democracy. Personally I think this article is misleading as it doesn't acknowledge just how much interesting discussion goes into this debate. In my opinion: a state ruled by representatives of a citizen body is called an indirect democracy; a republic has a head of state that is not a monarch but a (directly or indirectly) elected citizen. But have a read of this it may be interesting and it shows my point with some very good sources to follow up on: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/pops/pop24/c01

So I'd say that the United States is a democracy and a republic (has a president as head of state). The UK is a democracy and a constitutional monarchy (has the King as head of state). I won't edit the page because I'm new and also I think it warrants discussion first. GinAlley (talk) 17:46, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

While correct, your choice of heading is extremely unfortunate, given that whether a country is a democracy or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether a country is a republic or not. It's two completely different dimensions, and they have nothing to do with each other. There are highly democratic republics (Iceland, Finland, Ireland, etc.), there are dictatorships that are republics (Myanmar, North Korea, the Central African Republic, etc.), there are highly democratic monarchies (Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, etc.), and there are dictatorships that are monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Swaziland, etc.). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.46.161.188 (talk • contribs) 17:42, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm no topical expert here, but I think that the simplistic assertion that a Republic is anything which is not a Monarchy is ridiculous, even if some sources support that definition (and, if some do, WP:DUE should come into play). I think the article used to assert this pretty plainly, but it doesn't seem to do that any longer I'm not really qualified to opine but I would say that. as far as choosing the head of state and/or the head of government goes, both the US and the UK are indirect democracies (the choice is not made directly by popular vote), and that an indirect democracy can be incompletely described as a government with its head officer(s) chosen by the people, and that Republic is probably a good label for such an incomplete description. I think the Government item in the infoboexs for the articles on US, United Kingdom, USSR, Russia, and North Korea, most of which use the term republic, do a fair job of describing the form of those governments. I also understand that there can be a lot of difference between form and substance. Since, per WP:TPG, the purpose of an article's talk page is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article, I'll observe that the continuing disagreements in this and other articles (notably this one and, to some extent, this one) over what is and is not a republic indicate that this article does a less than perfect job of clarifying that. 00:36, 12 March 2023 (UTC)Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill)

At some level what we have here is just a difference over language. The classic notion of a republic is a state not ruled by a monarch or hereditary nobility. It might be a direct democracy, a representative democracy, or not democratic whatsoever. This is the sense in which (for example) the political organization Republic uses the word.

On the other hand, there's a different sense of the word that focuses more on representative democracy. This is the sense probably more used in informal discourse in the United States, but I think not so much in the rest of the world.

As Wikipedia is not a dictionary, normally the correct solution to a single word used with different meanings is to have separate articles for the distinct meanings. That might be challenging in this case, given the complicated historical overlap. --Trovatore (talk) 19:52, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Normally on Wikipedia we would not be guided too much by how words are used in informal regional discourse, but we might mention such variants in the relevant articles in order to avoid confusion. I think creating a second article about Republics which says that they are democracies does not sound like a good idea. The two concepts are different, and the overlap/confusion can be explained in that articles about those two concepts. As to what Republic means, I think it goes further than not having a monarch, although that is certainly implied. The concept also implies that a state is governed in the interests of the people generally. The leaders lead on behalf of the population, rather than being rulers who rule the population. So they can not be dictatorships or autocracies. When dictatorships call themselves republics then they are claiming not to be dictatorships, so that is not necessarily a problem for the definition of the term.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:07, 14 March 2023 (UTC)