Republic is any form of government whose leader or leaders are elected, usually for a specific term of office. The word republic also refers to a country that has an elective form of government.
In the United States, the idea of a republic is widely associated with the notion of a democratic republic. In a democratic republic, the people as a whole exercise important controls over their elected leaders through elections, lobbying, and other processes. The leaders are expected to represent the interests of the people who elected them. If the voters believe that their interests have not been represented well enough, they may decide not to reelect the leaders. In this way, the voters in a democratic republic have some control over their government.
There are many other kinds of republics besides democratic republics. In some republics, the leaders are elected by a relatively small number of people and may be reelected more or less automatically. Communist nations traditionally allowed only candidates approved by the Communist Party to run for election, and there was only one candidate for each post. As a result, voters had no real choice of candidates when they went to the polls. These practices are still in effect in China and a few other Communist countries.
In some countries that are republics according to their constitutions, elections typically are not free, open, or honest. In some Latin-American republics, for example, widespread charges of vote fraud accompany nearly every election.
The most important early republic was the one that was established in ancient Rome in 509 B.C. This republic lasted until 27 B.C., when the political and military leader Augustus declared himself emperor. When the United States was founded in 1776, it became the only major country at the time that had a republican form of government.
Today, many of the countries of Western Europe are republics, including Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Many of the newer African and Asian nations are republics, as are all Latin-American countries. The Commonwealth of Nations, an association of nations that includes Britain and many of its former possessions, has numerous members that are republics (see Commonwealth of Nations (table: Independent members) ).
