Is the United States of America a Republic, and not a Democracy?

250 years ago, thirteen colonies of a global superpower got together and told their political overlord that they wanted a divorce. Not only did they write one of the most famous “Dear John” (or, really, “Dear George”) letters in all of human history, but in doing so they rejected monarchical rule and asserted the right of self-governance.

The Declaration of Independence plainly asserted that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In short, they rejected rule by the divine right of kings and founded a republic based on the natural right of humans to govern themselves. (To add insult to injury, Jefferson drew his thesis directly from English philosopher John Locke.)

Eleven years later, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” 

And, indeed, the US Constitution echoes the Declaration by acknowledging that “We the people” were the foundation of the government. Moreover, it guarantees “republican” government to the states.

The notion of a government based on popular sovereignty, as opposed to on kingship, is so normal to us a quarter of a millennium later that we don’t think too much about how radical a shift it was.

And from that radical shift to people power also emerged a system based on representative democracy. In 1789, we elected the members of the House of Representatives, and indirectly elected the Senate and the president (not to mention the election of state governments). A later amendment shifted to the election of the Senate by the voters, as opposed to being chosen by state legislatures.

The founding which we celebrate this month raises questions about the nature of our government, and can readily remind us of the divisions and debates over the founding’s meaning. The semiquincentennial is a good time to reflect on what we started and what we continue to struggle over.

A question of political rhetoric (and basic political science)

For example, it is oft stated in American political discourse that the United States is “a republic, not a democracy.” For those who know anything about what those words mean, the assertion is nonsensical because the terms are neither opposites nor are they mutually exclusive.

For a very long time, I simply took the phrase to be a simplistic slogan, or maybe a casual error. My professor's mindset long suggested to me that the deployment was mostly an error that could be corrected. But I have long been disabused of the notion that most deployers of the phrase have any interest in correction or learning.

So while I persist in a stubborn insistence that misunderstandings about the phrase can be corrected, my frustrations over its usage have led me to do some deep diving on the subject, including archival research into the phrase’s appearance in American newspapers dating back to the beginning.

I have also come to the conclusion that the sentiment that resides in the phrase, that we should not be governed by popular will, but instead that a more privileged minority ought to have more say, is emblematic of the politics of our age. And thus I think a deeper examination of the phrase is warranted.

The short(ish) answer to the question

Let me break the tension up top: the United States is both a republic (because it has no king) and a representative (as opposed to direct) democracy, because the authority to govern is conferred by voters (however imperfectly).

To clarify:

A republic is a kind of government wherein sovereign power derives in some way from the citizens, not from a royal person or some other source.

A democracy is a system of governing, in its most simple terms, wherein the people govern either directly through meeting in person to decide policy (i.e., “direct democracy”) or they elect agents to govern on their behalf (i.e., “representative democracy”).

It should be noted that direct democracy only works in very small settings and is essentially impossible on a national scale, and hence when modern speakers say “democracy,” they almost always mean “representative democracy.”

To clarify even further:

• The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not a republic, but it is a democracy.
• The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is neither a republic nor a democracy.
• The People’s Republic of China is a republic, but not a democracy.
• France, like the United States, is both a republic and a democracy.

Thus endeth the Comparative Politics 101 lecture.

If that was all you, the reader, wanted to know, you can eject now. If, however, you are wondering why I brought it up in the first place, read on!

It’s all Madison’s fault (well, kinda)

If we want to identify a possible patient zero for the American obsession with whether we are a republic or a democracy, we can look no further than James Madison, he of “Father of the Constitution” fame. 

In The Federalist Papers, specifically numbers 10 and 14, Madison makes a distinction between a “democracy” and a “republic.”

In Federalist 10, he states that  “a pure democracy” is “a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.”  He then defines a republic as “a government in which the scheme of representation takes place.”

He further clarifies as follows:

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

In Federalist 14, he states, “in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents.”

He further stated in Federalist 39: “we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.”

What we see here is the distinction that I made above between direct and representative democracy. In modern language, all Madison meant by “republic” is what we call “representative democracy.”

Really, one doesn’t even have to retroactively decipher what Madison was getting at, as contemporaries of the time understood it full well. On page 2 of the July 15, 1794 edition of the Philadelphia Gazette, one can find the following passage:

A republic or representative democracy, where the powers of government are exercised by delegation is the only form yet attempted that has not produced despotism. Such are the governments of America, and such must be the governments of Europe, before the people can realise the blessings of freedom.

Indeed, I reviewed 445 entries via the NewspaperArchive database from the 1790s through 1899 for the phrase “a republic, not a democracy,” which generated results of those words being on the same page, not just the exact phrase. While I did find the exact phrase, it was not common in that timeframe. On balance, however, even back in the 1790s, the words “democracy” and “republic” were used either synonymously or in some complementary fashion.

Indeed, I think it is fair to say that the general applications of the terms suggest that there was more than a sufficient understanding of the general co-mingled meanings of the words from the very beginning. I could not find a long-standing debate on the subject.

But, regardless, it is pretty clear that if one just reads what Madison had to say, the phrase “we’re a republic and not a democracy” is either nonsensical, or it means “we’re a representative democracy, not a direct democracy.”

And note that I do not bring up Madison to win some sort of proof-text game using the Framers. I bring his writings up for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to demonstrate that it is pretty clear that this debate really isn’t a debate; it was obvious to Madison and those who read him at the time what the basic goal was, even if those goals were imperfectly met.

So, if both contemporary political science and an examination of key founding documents should dispel any debate, why does the phrase persist?

Good faith application alongside bad faith/minoritarian goals

Let me pause and note that it is fair to question just how democratic the United States Constitution is. Indeed, the prominent political scientist, Robert Dahl, once asked in the title of one of his books, How Democratic is the US Constitution? In his answer, he notes that the US Constitution had seven key democratic shortcomings. Three of these we have rectified (we eliminated slavery, we installed universal suffrage, and we shifted the selection of Senators away from state legislators to voters). 

One deficiency has been partially ameliorated, which included limitations on congressional power. The creation of the income tax was an enhancement in this realm, and Dahl argued that there was an expansion of powers by judicial action, not constitutional reform.

Three of the democratic deficiencies remain in place, however. They are the Electoral College, equal representation of each state in the Senate, and over-powered judiciary that engages in what Dahl calls “judicial legislation.”

However, it should be noted that Dahl rejects the notion that any of this meant that the US Constitution created a “republic” instead of a “democracy.” Rather, he just notes the democratic deficits that the document contains.

Readers will, no doubt, make a connection between democratic deficiencies and court actions, given the role that courts have played of late in the redistricting wars.

As such, there is at least some discussion to be had as to the quality of American democracy. But even then, it does not validate the phrase.

Another good faith deployment is simply if people mean what Madison meant, that we have a representative democracy, not a direct democracy.

But most deployments do not fit the good-faith rubric. Instead, the phrase is almost always deployed not to critique, as Dahl does, the deficits of democracy in the US Constitution, but instead to defend them (such as the anti-democratic nature of the Senate and the Electoral College). Most readers will recognize most such deployments as in defense of minoritarian/oligarchic aspirations.

Space mitigates against a comprehensive history of the deployment of the phrase under discussion as it pertains to its use in favor of minoritarian goals (and/or anti-pluralistic ones). So here is a quick parade of lowlights with representative examples from the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first centuries.

The first usage I found in my research is from the September 29, 1836 issue of the Washington National Intelligencer, in an editorial defending slavery.

Our Government is a Republic, not a Democracy…The Constitution, in the choice of a President and United States Senate, cares nothing for majorities in many cases. Again: that part of the Constitution which gives Southern States, and Maryland too, among the States that hold slaves, a representation for those slaves, rejects every item of the majority principle…

In 1858, US Senator C. C. Clay, Jr. of Alabama used the phrase in a floor debate in his support of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, which Kansans rejected at the polls. 

A century later, in 1955, former Georgia Governor Herman E. Talmadge published a book entitled You and Segregation as part of his successful run for the US Senate. Page 17 of the tome contains the heading, “A Republic—Not a Democracy,” under which he warns that democracy is advocated by Communists and will lead to there being “only one race,” amongst other ills. Worse, Talmadge complains in Chapter 6 of his book that Blacks have been known to vote as a bloc, and therefore democracy is a problem because in some jurisdictions in Georgia, Black voters were in the majority (or something along those lines—the argument is not well made, save to decry “bloc voting” and the general influence of the NAACP).

In 1958, the John Birch Society was founded, and they popularized the phrase “This is a republic not a democracy. Let’s keep it that way.” Among the ills that clearly concerned the Birchers were the New Deal (because the masses were able to vote taxes on the wealthy and benefits for society, which they saw as communism) and racial integration. For a while, they plastered the phrase on metered mail via Pitney-Bowes machines until the Postmaster General determined that the phrase was one of political controversy.

The phrase continues to trickle through the discourse. If one is curious, go to X.com and search for the phrase. I keep track of it via a Google alert, so I see that while it is not as prevalent as it was in the 1960s, it definitely lives on. 

Indeed, while I was writing this essay, I was alerted to a Townhall.com column by former Congressman and Texas GOP chair, Allen West, which concluded with the following:

The future of our America lies in the balance, and it is a Republic, not a democracy. And it damn well ain't ever gonna be a Marxist/Islamist tyrannical totalitarian regime.

This sentiment (minus the Islamophobia) would fit right in with the Birchers or evocations of the phrase during various Red Scares in the early Twentieth Century.

A key contemporary deployer of the phrase is Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who helped in the attempt to overturn the 2020 elections. He tweeted out “We’re not a democracy” and “our form of government is not a democracy. It’s a constitutional republic” on October 7, 2020, during the vice presidential debates. Roughly two weeks later, he posted an editorial to his website, “Of Course We're Not a Democracy.”

I could go on (and on and on), but the point should be clear: this is a phrase with a long history, and one that is often associated with the darker corners of our national soul.

Why does it matter?

I have moved over the years from thinking that the issue was one of simple misunderstanding or some form of mythologizing about American exceptionalism to a far deeper recognition of a divide in the American psyche over the nature of our constitution and the government it creates.

I think that this is especially salient as we all collectively contemplate the American founding. If Jefferson and the Continental Congress rejected monarchy, what kind of government is appropriate for a republic? It would seem to me that people like Madison and the Framers of the US Constitution thought it was some kind of representative government (albeit one that was quite imperfect at the time and has yet to achieve perfection in the present day). Those who seceded in 1861envisioned a system of racial hierarchy.  Today, as noted above, some argue for some sort of techno-utopia that sees democracy as obsolete.  Beyond that, there are those who seem interested in a new racial caste system of white supremacy (or, at least, of “heritage Americans”), all while we are seeing the emergence of oligarchical elements in our politics.

The current political era has increased my focus on the question of illiberal minority rule versus liberal majority rule, and I can’t help but note that this is at the heart of the republic versus a democracy discourse.

In the past, the phrase was used to defend the power of the wealthy minority in the South who owned slaves. It was used by segregationists who were afraid that Black majorities in some jurisdictions would exercise their voting power, or simply to deny Blacks access to basic rights, because it would diminish white social and political power (a reality we are currently seeing again as southern states rush to district-away Black representation in Congress). It was used by those in opposition to the New Deal and various social spending because the wealthier minority did not want to be taxed to pay for broader social benefits.

In more contemporary times, it is used to defend the notion that it is okay for a president to be elected despite having lost the popular vote, or why voters in Wyoming count more than voters in California in such elections. It is used to justify the massive disparities in representation of citizens in the US Senate.

Indeed, it is hard to find a deployment of the phrase that isn’t somehow about the defense of allowing the numeric minority to have more power than the numeric majority.

However, it is worth noting that even the Founders, for all of their anti-democratic flaws, including slavery and limitations on suffrage, thought that our government should function under majority rule.

Yes, the Founders feared “tyranny of the majority,” but that is addressed by the protection of the Bill of Rights, among other processes and guarantees. But never forget that the whole point of the Revolution was to reject the tyranny of the minority in terms of rejecting the King and, moreover, to reject being governed by a parliament in which the Americans had no representation.

Never forget that a core notion at the heart of the aspirational text of the Declaration (and the Constitution) is to combat tyranny of the minority.

Conclusions

There is at least some level of good-faith attempts to explain away elements of the US constitutional order. However, those who try to launder the flaws of the Electoral College or how representation is allocated in the Senate need to be honest with themselves that they are not endorsing some sophisticated set of governing machinery that somehow balances interests in some magical way. No, they need to own up to their endorsement of minority rule as long as it is their minority who is ruling.

Most attempts to use the phrase like some kind of argumentation fairy dust know full well that they are just endorsing their power (whether it be minorities over majorities in presidential elections, rural minorities over urban majorities, or, in the past, racial disparities as manifested by slavery and later Jim Crow). 

Whether we wish to be generous and say that some of these assertions are good faith misunderstandings or bad faith obfuscations, it should be clear that there is no sophistication to the deployment of the phrase, “we are a republic, not a democracy.’  It is sophistry at best, and more likely simply vapid sloganeering.

One of the unfortunate conclusions I have reached in researching and thinking about this subject is that there are clearly many US citizens who do not believe in an inclusive notion of “We the People.”

These are topics to ponder as we celebrate our rejection of monarchical rule and the establishment of rule by the people. If rule by the people does not mean majority rule with minority protections (such as in the Bill of Rights), what else can it mean?  It surely can’t mean illiberal minority rule nor neo-oligarchy.

If all humans are, in fact, created equal, we need a government that takes such a proposition seriously.

Featured image is James Madison, by John Vanderlyn