A republic is a form of government where the country is treated as a “public matter” rather than the possession of a single ruler.

The people hold ultimate power but typically don’t govern directly, instead electing representatives to make laws and run the government on their behalf.

Its most essential feature is that the head of state isn’t a hereditary king or queen, but someone chosen by the people, directly or through elected officials, who serves for a limited time, which keeps the government accountable to citizens rather than to a royal family. Despite constitutional monarchies not having any real power.

Republics also rest on the rule of law rather than the wishes of a single ruler, meaning everyone, including those in power, must follow the same laws, with the broader goal of protecting citizens’ rights and serving the common good.

The word itself comes from the Latin phrase res publica, meaning “the public thing” or “the people’s affair,” combining res, meaning thing or matter, with publica, meaning public or of the people.

The Romans used the term because they saw the state as belonging to the people rather than to one ruler, and the phrase eventually passed through French as république before becoming the English word republic.

Fittingly, the word republic never actually appears in the U.S. Constitution, even though the document guarantees each state a “republican form of government.”

One of the earliest known republics was the Roman Republic, established around 509 BCE after the overthrow of the monarchy, where elected officials called consuls led the government for limited terms with guidance from a senate, a model that influenced many later republics.

Around the same era, ancient India had its own republics known as ganasanghas as far back as the 6th century BCE, often clan-based states like the Lichchhavis of Vaishali, where decisions were made in public assemblies rather than by a hereditary king, though some were instead aristocratic republics ruled by a council of elders.

Ancient Greece produced similar systems in its city-states, with Athens developing a democratic system around 508 BCE where citizens voted directly on laws, and Sparta running a mixed constitution with elected officials and a council, though both were small states that limited citizenship to only part of the population.

Ancient Carthage also had a republican structure, with elected officials called sufetes functioning much like Roman consuls.

The United States, which declared independence in 1776, is generally considered the earliest modern republic, the first large nation to build a government where power flowed from elected representatives rather than a hereditary monarch.

While smaller republics such as San Marino, founded in 301 CE and often called the world’s oldest surviving republic, had existed long before, the American model proved that a republic could succeed on a much larger scale, helping inspire the French Republic established in 1792 during the French Revolution.

That first French Republic lasted only 12 years before Napoleon turned it into an empire, and France has since had five separate republics altogether, each with its own constitution.

The Dutch Republic, which lasted from 1581 to 1795, was itself one of the earliest modern European republics and helped shape the thinking of the American founders.

Republics have taken many different shapes over time.

Not all of them have been democracies, since some, including the former Soviet republics, used the label while functioning as authoritarian states, and in many historical republics voting was limited to property-owning men, making the “public” a fairly narrow group.

Structurally, some republics have a largely ceremonial president while real power sits with a prime minister, and in a parliamentary republic the head of government is chosen by the legislature rather than directly by voters.

The Roman Republic also had an unusual office called “dictator,” meant as a temporary emergency leadership role, quite different from how the word is used today, and that republic lasted nearly 500 years before becoming an empire under Augustus in 27 BCE.

Philosophically, both Plato and Aristotle were skeptical of pure democracy and favored a mixed republic in which power was shared among different groups, an idea that echoes into the present, since many modern republics include a bill of rights in their constitutions specifically to protect citizens from government overreach.