Are you confused about whether America is a democracy or a republic? Are you confused about how places like North Korea and China that are not democratic can be called republics? In this video we’re gonna find out about what a republic is, how it works and what it means in relation to democracy. Finally we’re gonna find out whether America is a republic or a democracy, or both.

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The first thing to say about republics is that they are often defined in relation to their opposite- monarchies. This makes it quite difficult to define Republics in isolation- but I’m going to try to do it anyway! Firstly, monarchies or autocratices, are systems in which countries are ruled by a hereditary head of state like a king or a queen, and power is passed down through a royal family. Conversely, in republics, the head of state is an elected representative of the population. I would thus argue that because of this necessity of an elected representative, it means that republics are also democracies. They are not mutually exclusive.

A democracy is simply a country which has free and fair elections for representatives of the people, and they then make the decisions in government on the people’s behalf- most republics have all of this and an elected head of state. So to repeat in my opinion republics are by definition democratic. Here’s a quick example if you’re getting confused. So for example, the UK is a constitutional monarchy, it has an unelected queen but also elected mps who make decisions in the UK’s parliament, which is the real centre of power- France on the other hand is a republic and has an elected President but also deputes who sit in the national assembly. One country has a hereditary Queen, and is a monarchy, the other has an elected President and is a republic, but they are both democracies.

Now you might be saying hold up, if republics are also democracies, then how can dictatorships like China and North Korea be called Republics. To this I would say- they are not really republics. They are only republics in a relative sense, if you were talking about say Norway and China you would say Norway is a monarchy and China a republic. I don’t think it would be fruitful to talk about China as a republic in its own right because that implies China has the whole package that I’ve just spoken about, Does it have an elected head of state no not really, only the communist party gets to vote on its chairman, does it have elections of local representatives no. To summarise a republic is a democratic system of government with elected representatives, and an elected head of state.

So, if we apply my theory to the USA, we can see that it is a democracy, and a republic.
There is an elected head of state yes, but also free and fair elections. Some have argued that America cannot be a democracy because the founders set it up to not be majoritarian, However this forgets one important thing- democracy exists on a continuum, with majoritarianism, or direct democracy at one end, and quasi dictatorships at the other end. The founders wanted america to be in the middle between these two systems, and that’s why the constitution includes plenty of checks and balances on majority rule, to make it a representative democracy.

Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/...