By Lionel Getten

America is often referred to as a democracy, but recognized as a republic for which it stands, so what exactly caused these two different concepts to be used to describe our country interchangeably? The short answer is that we are a mix of both but the long answer is a little bit more complicated and interesting.

First, it’s important to note that democracy is defined as a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation. A republic, however, is defined as a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.

To put it simply, democracies are ruled by the people, while republics are ruled by the representatives that the people choose. Although, republics do have structures in place to prevent the tampering of certain unalienable rights unlike democracies. To make things even more confusing, the two major political parties in America each have a respective concept as a prefix in their names, Democrats and Republicans.

Although democracies and republics do not describe political views, they are still derivatives for America’s two-party system. While pondering this, I wondered why this was, and if this has any affect on how people view democracies and republics depending on their political party affiliation

As a quick American history class recap, the original two major political parties were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republican Party. Similarly to today, the two parties primarily disputed over different government policies, however, the Democratic-Republicans were more concerned with giving the state’s governments power, while the Federalists preferred the federal government to have more power over the states.

In this instance, the use of democracy and republic as a prefix for political affiliation was appropriate as both concepts describe giving more power to the people rather than the federal government, which would more closely resemble a monarchy. Eventually becoming overthrown by the Democratic-Republican Party, the Federalist Party dissipated.

With the absence of one major political party, congress divided once again over the controversial presidential election of 1824, resulting in a new two party system, The Democrats and Whigs. This was the first time where we did not see political party names resemble the views of their affiliates. As a concept known as semantic change, The meaning behind the names of these political parties were not necessarily linked to their political ideologies, and this remained consistent with the arrival of the Republican Party in the late 19th century.

The point I am getting at here is that despite the similarities in name, The Democratic Party is not a party dedicated to democracy and the Republican Party is not a party dedicated to the republic. As someone who recently learned this, I wondered who else might have been fooled by these party names and therefore based their opinions on these concepts on their political views.

As an experiment, I asked four Chaffey Students to use adjectives to describe both democracies and republics, then I explained to them the definition of both as described above, and asked them to once again describe them. At the end, I asked them their political views to see whether that would affect their initial answer.

Contestant number one is Kiley Jackson who identifies as a Democrat. When I initially asked her to describe democracy, she used the adjective “equal” while she was unable to find adjectives to describe republics. After explaining both definitions, she changed her adjectives for democracy to “privileged” and “unequal.”

Contestant number two is Sandra Small who identifies as “more towards Republican.” When I initially asked her to describe democracy, she used the adjectives “free” and “inclusive” whereas she described republics as conservative. After explaining both definitions, she kept the same adjectives.

Contestants number three and four are Alexis Lee and Heath Myers, who Identify as “in the middle.” When I initially asked them to describe democracy, they used adjectives like “hell” and “chaotic” whereas they described republics as “liberty” and “unity.” After explaining both definitions to them, they changed their adjectives for democracy as “not chaotic” and described republics as “the people.”

So there we have it, others were fooled as well. Almost all of the contestants used positive adjectives to describe the government type that they thought aligned with their political views before discovering that they have nothing to do with their political views at all really. Yeah sure, four people cannot speak for the rest of Chaffey students or Americans for that matter, but I am sure that the five of us were not alone in our initial thinking.

So what is America’s government type exactly? America is described as a representative democracy, which takes aspects from both democracies and republics to both hold elected officials to the same standards as everyone else while allowing the people to vote them in. So I guess you could say that democracies and republics work together to create this so-called-democracy that we celebrate today.

In this divided nation that we live in today, keep in mind that if democracies and republics can work together to create a nation worth celebrating, then maybe Democrats and Republicans can too.

*Names of students have been altered to protect privacy

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit http://usdemocracyday.org.\

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