What exactly is a republic anyway?

“These peculiar people call themselves republicans.”

Daniel Carpenter, the Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, presented his class with an image of emotional demonstrators waving red, white, and blue flags. Except there were no ruby-red MAGA hats in this contemporary newspaper photo.

“They were gathered, dressed in yellow for maximum visibility, to chant: ‘Not my king!’” Carpenter explained.

These self-styled British republicans, opposed to the 2023 coronation of King Charles III, proved the perfect opening for Carpenter’s spring 2025 “What is a Republic?” The Gen Ed offering, also available online via Harvard Extension School, has struck a chord in the current political moment. Enrollment has quadrupled since Carpenter last taught the course two years ago, with more than 250 in this semester’s class.

“The course description was fascinating because it highlighted that a republic is actually something pretty specific,” said student Michael Zhao ’25, a double concentrator in computer science and government from California. “It’s a system where power flows through representation from the people and is held in public offices rather than by individuals.”

Carpenter’s lectures will culminate with a deep dive into the 18th-century founding, and centuries-long evolution, of America’s particular approach to republican governance as well as a study of the Third and Fifth Republics of France. But first, Carpenter is guiding students through historic iterations of republics and proto-republican systems, with their varied approaches to organizing power — vested in elected and non-elected offices alike.

Many of today’s governing institutions, including Congress and parliaments around the world, owe much to ancient Rome during its republican period (roughly 509 B.C.-27 B.C.). No longer ruled by kings, Roman men were entrusted with electing representatives to various assemblies. The same era saw elected and appointed officeholders charged with managing public resources like infrastructure and tax revenue.

“How to balance responsiveness to popular sovereignty with institutional stability. How to maintain trust in government. How to keep officeholders accountable. These are questions that have challenged republican governments for millennia,” Zhao said.

Even non-representative systems inspired some of the key institutions of modern republics. Medieval Europe saw the first Catholic bishoprics (or dioceses) rising from the ashes of former Roman provinces. These clerical districts did not practice representative government, Carpenter told his students. But the republican state-builders of subsequent ages couldn’t help but copy the complex administrations of the wealthiest bishoprics.

“One way of thinking about European development is to look at where these different bishoprics begin to form,” Carpenter said while referring to a map of Europe in the early sixth century. “It’s a pretty good predictor of where universities are going to pop up. It’s a good predictor of where urbanization will start happening. It’s a good predictor of medieval trade.”

Accountability is a central tenet of any healthy republic, with elections being a crucial check. But one of the earliest innovations in holding power to account was available even to women, the poor, and other marginalized groups by the medieval era.

“How do people below the nobility engage in politics?” Carpenter asked. “One of the few, but very lasting, modes of representation is the petition.”

Republican Rome had various practices and venues for raising complaints. But evidence shows petitioning gaining a foothold in what Carpenter called the “hierarchical, profoundly unequal, and decentralized world” of sixth- to 12th-century Europe.

Soon audits and oaths also caught on as additional ways to keep the powerful in check and more responsive. “These institutions also developed heavily in the most advanced bishoprics and cathedral chapters,” the professor noted.

In addition to attending lectures, students in the course attend weekly discussion sections and tackle an ambitious reading list. Week one assignments included the Declaration of Independence and some of the best-known Federalist Papers. Week two found the students immersed in both classic and contemporary histories of ancient Rome — home to one of the longest-lived republics in human history.

“I really appreciate the rigor I’m getting from this course,” said Jack Flanigan ’27, a social studies concentrator from New York City. “His style of teaching is expansive and draws together a lot of different strands of scholarship into one coherent narrative.”

One text that left a big impression was Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Discorsi,” with the Italian Renaissance political philosopher drawing lessons from the gradual rise and less-gradual fall of Rome’s republic.

“Machiavelli wrote about the importance of having a mixed regime,” said Joshua Eneji ’28, a Texas native weighing concentrations in history, literature, and government. “He said you can’t have only one form of government, or it’s bound to fall. It needs to be intertwined with multiple forms of government so that it’s stable.”

It’s been 20 years since Carpenter, an expert on bureaucratic politics and the administrative state, introduced this study of republics. “You get to learn about the separation of powers, the working of assemblies, the importance of offices, and other institutions not necessarily emphasized in other government courses,” said Carpenter, who is now writing a book based on the class.

Interest in the subject has climbed. “Certain things people took for granted for decades or centuries are being destabilized,” the Government Department chair offered in an interview. “So Harvard students want to know: What are these things being destabilized at the moment? How did they first stabilize? And how do they begin to fall apart?”

One thing that can hinder this pursuit, Carpenter told the class, is clinging to ideas formed by the politically charged realities of 21st-century America. His first lecture touched on the “lazy trope,” ubiquitous on social media and within certain think-tanks, that America is a republic, not a democracy — or a democracy, not a republic.

He chalked it up to a mix of partisanship and presentism. “It’s a historical accident that one of our political parties happens to be named Republicans — and the other happens to be named Democrats,” he said. “And of course, neither of those parties were with us at the founding.”

“I beg of you,” he continued, “to let go of your predilections by saying, ‘Oh, I really want this to be a democracy’ or ‘I really want this to be a republic.’ It’s possible that it’s both.”