Hey, it's Dan Zimmerman. Welcome to Illustrate
to Educate. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to support more simple and
objective videos on topics that matter. Have you ever wondered what the difference
is between a democracy and a republic? In this video we’ll dive into the differences
between these two forms of government. Democracy comes from the Greek words for
“people'' (dēmos) and “rule” (kratos). So democracy essentially means “rule by the people.”
Democracy is a form of government that requires that the people be allowed to take part in
the government and its political processes. In a pure or direct democracy, all
citizens who are eligible to vote take an equal part in the process of directly
making laws that govern them. Put simply, in a pure democracy, the majority truly
does rule and the minority has little or no power. The term republic comes from the Latin
phrase res publica, meaning “the public thing,”. A republic is a form of government in which the
social and political affairs of the country are considered a “public matter,” with representatives
of the citizen body holding the power to rule. In a republic, the people elect representatives
to make the laws and an executive to enforce those laws. While the majority still rules
in the selection of representatives, an official charter lists and protects certain
inalienable rights, thus protecting the minority from the political desires of the majority. The
first historical example of a democracy can be traced back to around 500 BCE in Athens, Greece.
Athenian democracy was a true direct democracy, or “mobocracy,” under which the public voted on every
law, with the majority having almost total control over rights and freedoms. The first example of
a republic, although it was not a pure republic, appeared around 509 BCE in the form of the Roman
Republic. While the Roman Republic’s constitution was mostly unwritten and enforced by custom,
it outlined a system of checks and balances between the different branches of government. So
is the United States a Republic or a Democracy? When the delegates met in 1787 for the United
States Constitutional Convention, the difference between the terms republic and democracy were not
well defined. At the time, there wasn’t a term for a representative form of government created “by
the people” rather than by a king. In addition, American colonists used the terms democracy
and republic more or less interchangeably, as remains common today. The United States
however, like most republics, functions as a blended “representational democracy” featuring
a democracy’s political powers of the majority tempered by a republic’s system of checks
and balances enforced by a constitution that protects the minority from the majority. To
say that the United States is strictly a democracy suggests that the minority is completely
unprotected from the will of the majority, which is not correct. One feature
of a republic that makes it unique is a constitution. A constitution
protects the minority from the majority by allowing interpretation and overturning of laws
made by elected representatives of the people. In the United States, the Constitution assigns
this function to the U.S. Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. For example, in the
1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared all state laws
establishing separate racially segregated public schools for Black and White students to
be unconstitutional. The constitutionally-granted power of the judicial branch to overturn laws
made by the legislative branch illustrates the unique ability of a republic’s rule of law to
protect the minority from a pure democracy’s rule of the masses. Did you enjoy this video comparing
these two forms of government? If so, please like this video, and comment on your thoughts about
democracies and republics. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Illustrate to Educate for more
simple and objective videos on topics that matter.
