The Republic Concept

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A republic is a nationhood that does not observe direct nevertheless it has a structure of administration in which some significant members of the group retain the supreme control over the government. They make decisions in reference to established law other than the head of states.

The word republic is derived from a Latin phrase, res publica, which means public affairs. Often a republic is seen as a sovereign state, though this should not be mistaken with other sub-national units that are described as to as a republic, or that have government that is described as republican in form.

For example, Article IV of the Constitution of the United States guarantees to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government. The Soviet Union was a single state made up of discrete and ostensibly sovereign Soviet Socialist Republics. In many contexts, the term republic normally refers to a system of government that gets its powers from the governed rather than from default or excessive means, for instance inheritance or divine right.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montesquieu supported the idea of a republic, and recommended on the city-states of Greece as models. Nonetheless, both also opined that a nation state like France, with a population of 20 million, was impractical to be administered as a republic. Rousseau explained his ideal political structure of small autonomous communes, however Montesquieu noted that a city state was principally a republic, but held that a partial monarchy was more suited for to a large nation.

In 1995, a Princeton survey research association conducted an interview randomly to adults where people were asked how much they trusted their government to do the right thing, 21 percent said most of the time, 71 percent said only on sometimes. They were again asked the same question about their state government the result were slightly better since 30 percent said most of the time while 62 percent said only sometimes.

From these results we can conclude that the American people believe that their government is not doing the right thing in many of actions it takes. We know that nobody is perfect in this world but this numbers are so high resulting into some questions that needs answers such as, What caused this problem in the United States, what is the extend of this problem in our country, and is this distrust of our government even a serious problem at all?

The answer to these questions cannot be easily found reason being there is no exact cause of the problem that can be pinpointed though people claim that it is as a result of poor leadership. Two of the biggest drops in the publics confidence in the government occurred in 1964, during the bombing of Vietnam, and in 1972 during Watergate (Nye) during the time President Johnson and President Nixon were in power.

Although these two events may have contributed to the distrust of the American government, it does not necessarily mean that they are fully responsible to what is happened. This happened 20 years ago and cannot be the cause of distrust to date because for one reason, the act of mistrust of the government has been growing consistently and cannot be compared to before. Therefore the problem cannot be pegged to the two leaders but the entire American political leaders.

Another survey was done in a 1995 where 35 percent of the respondents viewed the main reason why they did not trust the federal government is that politicians lack honesty and integrity another 45 percent said politicians are not concerned with the interests and well-being of the people. This results clearly show that there is no way people can trust there government as a whole if they do not trust those who make up the government.

To know how wide spread the problem of distrust is in the American government ABC News polling organization did seven different polls between 1985-1987 asking, How much of the time do you trust the government in Washington to do what is right? Between 56-62 percent said sometimes or never. In 1994, polls results showed that 15 percent of the American public had confidence in the federal government and only 30 percent had confidence in their state and local government.

Distrust in United States government is not mainly from a small segment of people mainly the poor as many people think because from the research conducted we can see that Americans have very little trust in their political leaders.

It is clear distrust of the government by the people and this poses serious problems when it comes to governance and cooperation. Many people state that the cynicism and distrust in America are not a problem at all. People say that mistrust of government has been around since the countrys beginning and is nothing to worry about they farther believe that America was founded with a mistrust of government that is king George of England.

Another opinion is that people value the constitution so much even though they do not trust the every day activities of the government, 80% of Americans believe United States as the best place in the world to live and 19% say that they like the democratic system of government. Thy e fact that not all the Americans actions are mistrusted gives hope to the citizens to gain back trust in there government.

The majority of people do not trust their government and its causes are varied. This trend, though it can be related to the type of politicians that are being elected in the country and the peoples feelings towards those officials.

Although some do not believe it is really a problem, it would be nice to be able to place some faith and trust is the people who lead and direct this country. It appears that the only way to do that is to elect individual people that we can trust and the only way to accomplish that is to become educated on the issues and vote.

Works Cited

Adams, Paul. Republicanism in Political Rhetoric Before 1776. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Sep., 1970): pp. 397421. Print.

Anderson, Lisa. Absolutism and the Resilience of Monarchy in the Middle East. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 106, No. 1 (Spring, 1991): pp. 115. Print.

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967.

Everdell, William. The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Print.

Finer, Samuel. The History of Government from the Earliest Times. Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.

Gelderen, Martin & Skinner, Quentin. Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, v2, The Values of Republicanism in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002. Print.

Haakonssen, Knud. Republicanism. A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995. Print.

Hankins, James. Exclusivist Republicanism and the Non-Monarchical Republic. Political Theory 38.4 (August 2010): 452-482. Print.

Kramnick, Isaac. Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Print.

Maynor, John. Republicanism in the modern world. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003. Print.

McCormick, John. Machiavelli against Republicanism: On the Cambridge Schools Guicciardinian Moments Political Theory, Vol. 31, No. 5 (Oct., 2003): pp. 615643. Print.

Nippel, Wilfried. Ancient and Modern Republicanism. The Invention of the Modern Republic ed. Biancamaria Fontana. London: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Print.

Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. NY: Oxford U.P., 1997. Print.

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The Republic Concept

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