“Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context. The sometimes contrary definitions are all covered in this article.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism)
That is a definition one finds on the internet, when you search for the term “Republican” in general. Obviously there is no consensus about the word “republicanism”, because you have different forms of “Republicanism”. It depends on the country you look at.
Okay, so far so good. To find out more about that general definition, we should think about what a republican stands for: A republican is someone “who favours a republic as the best form of government” (http://www.answers.com/topic/republican). But what is a republic?
We should begin by using the help of good old Latin. The word “republic” is deduced from the Latin word “res publica” which means “public affair”.
Nowadays you can say that most of the republic states have in common that they have no monarch as the head of the state but president.
Important for the understanding of a republic state are values like civic virtue and political participation. But the major republican value is political liberty. These values imply that the citizens of a country are under no pressure of a leader who lords over them and by doing that suppresses their requirements.
To sum it up a republic state “(it) provides a ground on which to elaborate both a substantive and a constitutional theory of the state.” It deals as well with safekeeping the citizen’s freedom as well as with its own government tasks.
You could write so much more about “republicanism” or republic in general, but for now that should have given you a first impression of it.
Nevertheless when talking about “republicanism” you do not get by the American term of “republicanism”, because “the first republic to adopt the title was the United States of America” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic)”.
So let’s see in our next blog entry what American “republicanism” is.
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http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/republicanism/
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2003/entries/republicanism/
