Talk:Constitutional republic

Discussion on whether this should be submitted for deletion

Following the source link back to eng wikipedia, the original article was deleted in 2012. In the talk history of that article, it's been stood up but then submitted for deletion, and then deleted, several times for not meeting guidelines relevant to appropriate citations, and for being more of a POV article. Dream-king (talk) 21:32, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Is the phrase "constitutional republic" a valid entity?

I question the validity of the phrase because every country in the world has a constitution - the only possible exception is Saudi Arabia who claim the Koran is their constitution. A troubling aspect is the implication that a constitution "limits" the government. I think that idea ignores the fact that a constitution does define the government but any constitution includes assigned duties and purposes in addition to restrictions or "limits". It is a clever twist on the process of defining something but is also misleading along with misusing language. --- DHT863 (talk) 22:22, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

You'll find other states which are probably in a similar situation; e.g. Vatican city state. Imo, all a constitutiondoes is define the limits of the state. In the case of an absolute monarchy, you do probably not need this limit. Also look at the French Revolution: How long did it take them to get a constitution? So what oes the constitution of Brunei look like? - Is it comparable to that of France? --Eptalon (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. Yes there are seven absolute monarchies in the world today. None of them have a constitution. Those monarchs have unlimited powers because they are not limited by a constitution. Which brings me back to the semantic problem: a constitution limits the power of the government or the state in the sense that a monarch had unlimited power. But it is more accurate to say that a constitution defines the powers of a government and the state. I think this is an important point that requires diligence because there are political extremist who build their case on the misconception that a constitution "limits" and therefore justifies the theory of smaller government along with the tactic of budgetary starvation of agencies. --- DHT863 (talk) 01:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

The more interesting cases though are those such as the small states in Europe: Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Vatican, ...; San Marino has the oldest constitution still in force; it dates from 1600. The big question though: is there a repulic without constiution, can there be? --Eptalon (talk) 10:49, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

A republic without a constitution? That might be possible under a dictatorship were the leader takes over the government and discards the old constitution. Or there is a military coup that suspends the constitution. Yea, a military can easily operate a whole country w/o constitution. Any known examples of that? -- DHT863 (talk) 23:55, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Why is this article still up?

The original deleted article it was branched from was the result of rhetoric and internet trolling in a previous elections and then it was revived twice more during US election years. The limited sources cited are vague in their substantiation of the article's premise and this really doesn't belong in an encyclopedia when it is baseless. You will notice the central theme of this article is the United States being the first "constitutional republic" but the United States has always been officially defined as the first "democratic, federalist republic". Constitutional is meaningless because it just means that a government has some type of charter for government, something which all governments have even if they don't officially call it a constitution. The diagram in the article actually describes a democratic federalist republic, ie a collection of individual states that have fully functional governments that are united (federation, federalist) into a central national government, who's citizens democratically elect (democracy) those who represent them in the united national government (republic) formed by the federation of individual states. Constitutional Republic isn't a legitimate definition used by any respectable academic scholars to describe any form of government and could describe almost all governments but so-called failed states. For example, Mainland China could be called a constitutional republic because it officially has a constitution (is constitutional) and has a representative congress (is a republic) that isn't elected through general elections (not a democracy) but is a single state system (not federalist). This entire article is meaningless gobbledygook that sounds intellectual but adds nothing to a legitimate encyclopedia but a bunch of meaningless political rhetoric buzzwords.

It is now better than last time. Nigos (talk · contribs) 08:40, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

It was re-written. Articles can always become better. Nigos (talk · contribs) 08:41, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

As pointed out previously, the validity of the phrase and premise is the issue because every country in the world has a constitution. This article seems to mainly discuss specifically the United States and was forked from a German Wikipedia article, I have to wonder if something was lost in translation and if the original creation of the English page was in error. Is this entire article a result of a translation error by a German speaker to which English is a second or third language? The word constitution just describes a charter for government and does nothing to actually add to the phrase describing a type of government. Calling a government "Constitutional Republic" is like saying "Charter Government". It doesn't tell you if the republic is democratic, socialist, federalist, monarchy, communist or a combination of those descriptors. Reputable reference material list republic based governments with a combination of those modifiers but not "constitutional" as one of the modifiers. Even Mainland China and North Korea, which are communist governments with no elections by the people have official constitutions. For example the article claims the US is the "first constitutional republic" but this is false, the US is the first "democratic, federalist republic". The photograph of a poster center pieced in this article which claims to be titled "Diagram of the Federal Government and American Union, the first constitutional republic", doesn't just not contain any reference to "constitutional republic" in the image itself or the United States being "the first" but the title given is actually false and original non-wikipedia official title doesn't contain the term "constitutional republic" nor is this term contained in the US Library of Congress description. This can be confirmed on the source LOC website at https://www.loc.gov/item/98503857/. In addition to this, I suggest you actually go read the two references listed in this article, the first isn't about this articles fictional "constitutional republics" but just citizens faith in the ability of a government to abide by its constitution, its charter, and the second reference isn't even about governments or political science at all but city police forces and ethics in community policing. There is a reason this is not an article or section atm on the non-simple Wikipedia. delete --ArhGee (talk) 23:54, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

I'd suggest taking this article down. It doesn't belong on Wikipedia not even the simple one. -- SteffooM (talk) 12:06, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

@SteffooM: If you want it down, you can start an RfD and then wait for some input from other editors. Darubrub (Let me know) 12:13, 24 August 2021 (UTC)