“You know, we don’t live in a democracy because a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner. OK? It’s not just majority rule. It’s a constitutional republic. The founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition of what a civil society is supposed to look like. What’s happened, Alex, …
I’ve always heard that a Republic is one where power rests in the people and is exercised through their representatives. So more the latter than the former.
And it’s convoluted because governments are weird. For example, the UK is not a Republic, it’s a monarchy, though it’s effectively a Republic because the monarch has only symbolic power. To change the UK to a Republic would only require changing the position of head of state to an elected or appointed position subject to Parliament or the people (either one), which is largely a name change. On the flipside, Iran is a Republic, and it’s certainly less representative of the will of the people than the UK.
So using terms like “Republic” or “Democracy” by themselves isn’t interesting, what’s interesting is what level of control the people have over their own government.
I’ve always heard that a Republic is one where power rests in the people and is exercised through their representatives. So more the latter than the former.
And it’s convoluted because governments are weird. For example, the UK is not a Republic, it’s a monarchy, though it’s effectively a Republic because the monarch has only symbolic power. To change the UK to a Republic would only require changing the position of head of state to an elected or appointed position subject to Parliament or the people (either one), which is largely a name change. On the flipside, Iran is a Republic, and it’s certainly less representative of the will of the people than the UK.
So using terms like “Republic” or “Democracy” by themselves isn’t interesting, what’s interesting is what level of control the people have over their own government.