Democratic republic

Part of the Politics series
Republicanism
Concepts Anti-monarchism Democracy Democratization Liberty as non-domination Popular sovereignty Republic Res publica Social contract
Schools Classical Modern Federal Kemalism Nasserism Neo-republicanism Venizelism
Types Autonomous Capitalist Christian Democratic Federal Federal parliamentary Islamic Parliamentary People's Revolutionary Secular Sister Soviet
Philosophers Arendt Cicero Harrington Jefferson Locke Machiavelli Madison Mazzini Montesquieu Pettit Polybius Rousseau Sandel Sidney Tocqueville Wollstonecraft
History Roman Republic Gaṇasaṅgha Classical Athens Republic of Venice Republic of Genoa Republic of Florence Dutch Republic American Revolution French Revolution Spanish American wars of independence Trienio Liberal French Revolution of 1848 5 October 1910 revolution Chinese Revolution Russian Revolution German Revolution of 1918–1919 Turkish War of Independence Mongolian Revolution of 1921 11 September 1922 Revolution 1935 Greek coup d'état attempt Spanish Civil War 1946 Italian institutional referendum 1952 Egyptian revolution 14 July Revolution North Yemen Civil War Zanzibar Revolution 1969 Libyan coup d'état 1970 Cambodian coup d'état Metapolitefsi Iranian Revolution 1987 Fijian coups d'état Nepalese Civil War Barbadian Republic Proclamation
National variants Antigua and Barbuda Australia Bahamas Barbados Canada Ireland Jamaica Japan Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Norway Spain Sweden United Kingdom Scotland Wales United States
Related topics Communitarianism Criticism of monarchy Egalitarianism The Emperor's New Clothes Liberalism Monarchism Primus inter pares
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A democratic republic is a form of government operating on principles adopted from a republic and a democracy. As a cross between two similar systems, democratic republics may function on principles shared by both republics and democracies.

While not all democracies are republics (constitutional monarchies, for instance, are not) and not all republics are democracies, common definitions of the terms democracy and republic often feature overlapping concerns, suggesting that many democracies function as republics, and many republics operate on democratic principles, as shown by these definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary:

• Republic: "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."^[1]
• Democracy: "A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives."^[2]

Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law notes that the United States exemplifies the varied nature of a constitutional republic—a country where some decisions (often local) are made by direct democratic processes, while others (often federal) are made by democratically elected representatives.^[3] As with many large systems, US governance is incompletely described by any single term. It also employs the concept, for instance, of a constitutional republic in which a court system is involved in matters of jurisprudence.^[3]

As with other democracies, not all persons in a democratic republic are necessarily citizens, and not all citizens are necessarily entitled to vote.^[4] Suffrage is commonly restricted by criteria such as voting age^[5] and sometimes by felony or imprisonment status.