8
Republican Constitutions
The first definitive article is that the constitution of each state should be
republican. What does this mean and is it the same thing as democracy – as most
democratic peace theorists seem to think? To say that a state is republican means at least
two things for Kant. First, it is not a democracy. Second, there must be a separation of
powers. As odd as it may seem the first is not a problem for democratic peace theorists
who want to use Kant as a foundation for their argument; the second may be a problem.
When Kant says that a republic is not a democracy, he merely means that it is not a direct
democracy. The more representation there is for Kant, the less democracy there is.
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By
our own standards all modern democracies are also republics simply using this
description as there are no states that solely rely on direct democracy.
What of separation of powers? Few republics today have the separation of
powers that liberal republican theorists of the 18
th
century would have recognized. The
United States has separate means for selecting its legislature and its executive branches.
Great Britain, for example, and every other state that uses the parliamentary system
selects its executive from its legislature. There is, therefore, a greater potential for
arbitrary government (by Kant’s standards).
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Is this a problem for democratic peace
theorists who wish to cite Kant? Actually, it is not. Even parliamentary systems, as long
as they have written constitutions (or constitutions rooted in deep tradition), and frequent
for the war once it was determined that Iraq possessed no WMD, was not aiding terrorists, and was not, in
general, a threat to the United States.
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Kant may be following the unique distinction James Madison makes if Federalist 10. During the
ratification debate in 1798 Madison referred to democracies as small regions where people directly control
legislation and republics as large areas where the people are represented in the legislature. This was a
historically unique definition of democracy and republic.
14
The reason that republican government appealed to Kant, and others, was that republican government
meant non-arbitrary rule. See Pettit (1997).
Convention