The United States today exhibits a republican government structure. It’s foundational document, the Constitution, enumerates the rights enjoyed by every citizen. These are not subject to abridgement by the vote of a majority. This limitation on the type of decisions that can be made helps define the liberal republican government we have. This is in contrast with a pure democracy. A pure democracy provides the electorate the ability to change anything they wish, for better — as with righting a wrong in society — or worse. To borrow from Winston Churchill, a democracy of this kind can be a sheep and two wolves voting on what to eat for dinner. A pure democracy is more common than what one might at first think. Any system which allows for substantial revision of society — such as can occur and has in many nations of modern Europe — absent an institutional backstop which protects and codifies rights is a pure democratic system at heart. The Founding Fathers distrusted the unlimited power of a democratic electorate. They believed that such a voting body manifested all of the passion and none of the prudence of organized political society. Accordingly, they designed a system that created limitations to exercising this power.
Naturally, as old creeds buckle beneath the rigors of a changing world, we might be skeptical of an arrangement of power that works against a popular will. Furthermore, our sensibilities have an even harder time abridging this democratic process for its anchoring to a religious belief many may not share. We live in an age of complexity very different from the 18th century. But although we may be skeptical of how such core claims as those at the heart of our Constitution are anchored, the practical benefits are quite clear. To say that one free person cannot infringe the rights of another fundamentally limits the harm one person can cause another. In a pure democracy, the winning majority takes all (or at least as much as they want). Furthermore, pure democracies don’t have a strong track record of building strong institutions across the ages. As one noted thinker on the subject, Francis Fukuyama, explains in Political Order and Political Decay, pure democracies can often harm the growth and development of strong institutions. To Fukuyama, capable governing institutions can evolve democratic features sooner than democracies can build strong institutions. If one essential end of government is continuity through time (for how else can values be transmitted and lives peacefully lived?), then we may find it prudent to admit of some balance of considerations. On one side, the Founding Fathers believed, are the political mechanisms that support longevity (even if they sacrifice the immediate popular will) and on the other, accountability.
But while our republican system has been turned towards securing the ends of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, not every republican system needs to follow the content of our own to be considered “republican” in a technical sense. If placed on a spectrum between pure democracy on one end and pure autocracy on the other, a republic might actually find a middle ground between the two in regard to how authority is derived and how much the popular will is cancelled by some other concern. For something to be a republic it need only be framed as serving a public purpose and feature some accountability among different factions. Its functional structure mediates accountability with a community’s most prized values. Therefore, illiberal republics can exist because they simultaneously cancel a popular will when it interferes with a “sacred” knowledge but also allows for some popular decision-making. Certainly, no such content-wide endorsement of republican models to governance appeal to the average Westerner (myself including). But such models can and do exist. One such example is Iran. At least in theory, the supreme religious leaders of the country work alongside an electorate to operate the government. Quite literally, sacred knowledge is ordered alongside limited democracy. This dual functioning (in Iran, the democratic principle is subordinate to the religious principle) is an example of an illiberal republic: a community run in an ostensibly public interest with a controlling body of knowledge and some expression of popular accountability.
Because all republics feature a mechanism to elevate certain core values beyond the range of a public referendum, they are by nature a conservative arrangement. They bend the future into the status quo, not the status quo to the future. As with the case of the United States, locking values in place about the innate rights of all citizens has proved a positive factor in growth, justice, and development. In the US, these enumerated protections increase community confidence because there are objective and clearly defined rules that people play by as they live together. Evacuating the Enlightenment content from our republican system raises broader questions about what systems of government a republic can support. We may recognize any other possible configurations of republican government as illiberal or even despotic. The content of what a government values is an essential component of labeling the government type accurately. Factoring in content, we see a distinct difference between the US and Iranian models of republican government.
Although a republican government can admit degrees of illiberal or autocratic rule, they can also be an important first step establishing the principle that people have some say where they live. Even if only a rhetorical support at first, subsequent developments can push open the door further to more complete public accountability. This brings us to China.
China today is a crucible that combines an unstoppable dynamism of newly affluent consumers against a static and outdated autocratic system. So long as China continues to expand economically, the government will find itself gradually losing this battle for control. Against this pressure and the ability of Chinese to vote with their feet and hence moderate the effects of unpopular policies, Beijing may eventually find it in its interests to offer a new deal to Chinese people. Doing so could let slip the space for Chinese to secure certain basic rights independent of the premise of total power of the Chinese state. Given how conservative a republican model of government can be of whatever stripe, it might seem the next natural option for the political evolution of the Chinese state.