Democracy & Republic

[Ozymandias]

I just posted this in another thread before realizing how (shall we say) heated the debate in that thread had become on other matters. So, here, repeated, is something I've often wondered about in Civilization terms --

In the modern world, almost everyone has forgotten that a democracy and a republic are different -- we certainly use the terms interchangeably enough in the US. HOWEVER, whereas democracy represents universal suffrage, in a republic, political power is typically only held by property-owning males of the dominant ethnicity. So, many of the ancient Greek city-states were indeed republics, and America during World War I was a republic, and is now a democracy.

I'm intrigued that Suffrage was a wonder in the earlier Civs, since suffrage is all that distinguishes a democracy from a republic. So perhaps Suffrage should be a minor wonder which every Civilization could "build" at some post-industrial point after discovering the republic.

Yours from the Demos,

Ozymandias

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Ozymandias
In the modern world, almost everyone has forgotten that a democracy and a republic are different -- we certainly use the terms interchangeably enough in the US. HOWEVER, whereas democracy represents universal suffrage, in a republic, political power is typically only held by property-owning males of the dominant ethnicity. So, many of the ancient Greek city-states were indeed republics, and America during World War I was a republic, and is now a democracy.

I think you have it backwards . If anything, democracy should be an ancient form of gov't and republic a modern one. In fact, the word "democracy" comes from Greek, originally referring to the *true* Greek democracies. What modern pro-Westerners refer to as "indirect democracy" is in fact a type of republic. The dictionary defines "republic" as:

(1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law
(2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government

So indeed the modern nations are republics; the only thing that deserves to be called "democracy" is direct democracy like in ancient Greece.

Suffrage is *not* a defining factor of democracy, nor of a republic. In both of these, voting rights may be attributed to certain people and not to others. While it is present in modern republics for the most part (except the US where blacks and Floridians can't vote), it was not always so. Remember women's suffrage?

[Ozymandias]

Plato's "Republic" and Lincoln's "Republic" all referred to states with decision making powers limited by gender etc. Nevertheless, leaving aside dictionary definitions, political theory etc. --

Civilization clearly makes a major distinction between Republic and Democracy (as major as between either of those and Communism) so perhaps another way of phrasing my question is, What distinguishes the two in real-world terms?

Clearly, "democracy" is more advanced (by virtue of occuring later in the tech tree), but what else differentiates the two.

Yours from both the Demos and the Res Publica,

Ozymandias.

[Odin]

"The Republic" represents ancient rebublics such as early Rome. "Democracy" represents today's modern republics

[kolpo]

Not all republics are democracies. France under Napolion was a republic but certainly not a democracy. But a Republic can be democratic: like modern France.

Also not all democracies are republics: Sweden, The Netherlands, England, modern greece, Spain, England, Italy,... all democracies but not republics.

So I think that both democratic republics and parlemential democracies are in civ3 called democracies and that republic referes to things like France under Napolion and USA before Black and woman could vote.

[Ozymandias]

As I've thought more about this, I began to question more of the game's governments structure, so I started a thread in the "General" section which those of you who have been participating in this debate might find interesting.

Thanks,

O.

[St Leo]

Representative democracy is a republic; direct democracy is a democracy.

[Ozymandias]

So, in short, we have absolutely no consensus among us what "Republic" and "Democracy" are supposed to represent in Civ game terms!

-- Any comment, Firaxis?

-Ozymandias