Republicanism

Political philosophers use “republicanism” in two related senses. Historically, it names a tradition of writers — from Roman authors like Cicero through Machiavelli, seventeenth-century English republicans, and Montesquieu to many Americans of the founding generation — who stressed civic virtue, political participation, the dangers of corruption, mixed government, and the rule of law. In its modern philosophical form, it defines liberty as non-domination: being free means not living at the mercy of anyone’s arbitrary power, whether a king, a master, or an unaccountable official.

Revolutionary Americans drew on this tradition to interpret British policy. Taxes laid by a Parliament in which they had no voice, standing armies in peacetime, and royal officials who answered to London looked like the first steps toward slavery — a word they used constantly, and with little sense of irony in a society built partly on actual slavery. Independence, in this view, was necessary to preserve liberty from corruption.

After independence, the question was whether a republic could survive across a large territory. Classical thinkers had held that republics must be small. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison turned that argument around, contending that a large, diverse republic would better control factions. The new state constitutions and the federal Constitution tried to build republican government that did not depend on citizens always being virtuous — through representation, elections, and separated powers.

• The Declaration of Independence’s claim that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
• The Constitution’s guarantee to every state of “a Republican Form of Government” (Article IV) and its ban on titles of nobility.
• Thomas Jefferson’s belief that independent farmers made the best republican citizens, because they depended on no one for their living.
• Early republican fears of debt, banks, and standing armies, which fueled opposition to Alexander Hamilton’s program.