Modern Republicanism
Learn about modern republicanism — the political philosophy that government should be a public matter, exercised by elected representatives accountable to the people.
Modern republicanism is the political philosophy that government should serve the common good (res publica — 'public thing'), exercise power through elected representatives, and protect individual rights through constitutional safeguards. It drew on classical models (the Roman Republic, Athenian democracy) while adapting them to the conditions of the modern world.
The republican tradition was revived during the Renaissance by thinkers like Machiavelli, who studied the Roman Republic as a model of political virtue and civic engagement. The English Commonwealth (1649–1660) and the Dutch Republic (1581–1795) demonstrated that viable alternatives to monarchy existed. But it was the American Revolution that established the first large-scale modern republic, demonstrating that self-government could work on a continental scale.
The American constitutional system — with its separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and Bill of Rights — became the most influential model of republican government. The French Revolution attempted a more radical republicanism, with mixed results. Over the following two centuries, republicanism spread globally as colonized peoples and subject nations claimed the right to self-governance. The tension between democratic majority rule and the protection of minority rights — the central challenge of republican government — remains the defining political question of the modern world.