City-states can be ruled as republics, provided the city in question has a caste of independent and dynamic elites for citizenry, in the vein of the Italian merchant republics. The important takeaway is that republics should be understood as a subtype of aristocracy, not a mass movement, and only for a certain type of aristocrat, living in a certain place, at a certain time.
Elevate plebs to political power alongside the patricians, or even a different type of aristocrat, one that gets his power from some other source, and the system will start to break down.
A very thought-provoking viewpoint. Makes sense. A continuum of democracy-republic-autocracy as a degree of power that the aristocracy has. It makes me rethink Machiavelli's views on republics.
"...cities without freedom have never expanded either in dominion or in wealth. For it is not the specific value but the general value that makes cities great. And certainly this general value is only found in republics... in every republic there are two conflicting factions, that of the productive commoners and that of the ruling establishment, and this conflict is the source of all laws that favor freedom."
America had that characteristic for long past its "frontier stage", its used to be an economically and politically decentralized nation, city governments engaged in more economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy in their areas than the federal government did. The USA's Old Republic was a democracy, it had democratic governance structures (mass member parties that were geographically decentralized into partially publicly accessesable nodes) that were localized and wielded real power. It didn't even go away over night, we didn't begin to transition away from it until the 1930s, but it wasn't until the early 1960s that we lept far away from it (I visited the era, and it was explicit, they then retconned history edit out all the statements and promises and a whole lot else after technocracy was proven to be both cognitively inferior to the democratic structures of the old republic and far more corrupt), and it wasn;t until some point in the Carter admin that we started speeding towards where we are now.
Excellent point on the necessity of the frontier to the American spirit. Urbanization and republican virtues seem antithetical unfortunately.
City-states can be ruled as republics, provided the city in question has a caste of independent and dynamic elites for citizenry, in the vein of the Italian merchant republics. The important takeaway is that republics should be understood as a subtype of aristocracy, not a mass movement, and only for a certain type of aristocrat, living in a certain place, at a certain time.
Elevate plebs to political power alongside the patricians, or even a different type of aristocrat, one that gets his power from some other source, and the system will start to break down.
A very thought-provoking viewpoint. Makes sense. A continuum of democracy-republic-autocracy as a degree of power that the aristocracy has. It makes me rethink Machiavelli's views on republics.
"...cities without freedom have never expanded either in dominion or in wealth. For it is not the specific value but the general value that makes cities great. And certainly this general value is only found in republics... in every republic there are two conflicting factions, that of the productive commoners and that of the ruling establishment, and this conflict is the source of all laws that favor freedom."
Discourses on Livy
Very true, thanks for the reply. Universal Suffrage and its consequences.
Does anyone really want to copy the Venetians at this stage?
America had that characteristic for long past its "frontier stage", its used to be an economically and politically decentralized nation, city governments engaged in more economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy in their areas than the federal government did. The USA's Old Republic was a democracy, it had democratic governance structures (mass member parties that were geographically decentralized into partially publicly accessesable nodes) that were localized and wielded real power. It didn't even go away over night, we didn't begin to transition away from it until the 1930s, but it wasn't until the early 1960s that we lept far away from it (I visited the era, and it was explicit, they then retconned history edit out all the statements and promises and a whole lot else after technocracy was proven to be both cognitively inferior to the democratic structures of the old republic and far more corrupt), and it wasn;t until some point in the Carter admin that we started speeding towards where we are now.
I cannot wait to move west.
If any frontier is left… 2,000,000x better than New Jersey. 😑 it’s where my soul belongs.