The academic literature on republicanism, in my experience, largely assumes one major distinction between kinds of republicanism. As I did not do conduct a major literature review just recently on the issue, I may have missed something, but it seems safe to say that the distinction I am getting onto is well established. That is the distinction between Roman and Athenian republicanism, with the two big names in the field, Philip Pettit and Hannah Arendt lined up on either side.
There are other distinctions between Pettit and Arendt, in the ways they approach political thouht but I will leave those aside here. In terms of general political thought, Pettit has a more individualised and reductive approach to rights, while Arendt refers to a lived experience of the political side of humanity. Pettit's 'Romanism' is indeed a claim to avoid the supposed denial of individuality and the right to be free from the political sphere, apparently inherent in 'Athenianism'. Arendt's 'Athenianism' is a claim to deal with the role that politics has in the life of humanity, which can never just be 'social', so lacking the competition for power in a public space. There are ways we might try to equate those with differences in political position with regard to issues other than pure political structures, but I do not believes that those really work out and that is again something I leave aside.
Pettit's approach also tends to lay claim to at least part of the Florentine republican tradition, particularly with regard to Machiavelli, and then to an Atlantic tradition extending through Dutch, English, and American Revolutions along with the associated literature. In this understanding, Arendt is left with an Athenian republicanism, which tends to resurface in moments of obviously destructive intensification of a violent political will in the Terror aspect of the French Revolution, and later attempts at radical politicisation of all human society. I don't think Pettit accuses Arendt of being a Jacobin fanatic, but he uses oppositions which leave her under suspicion of some degree of complicity with such a mentality.
Arendt was herself happy to suggest a deep split between Athenian and Roman republicanism, in which the Athenians had some insight into the heart of political humanity, while the Romans retreated in legal formalism, in which society has a less political existence. However, on the whole her thought does not seem to be against individual rights and a legal framework. There is some considerable degree of variety in the ways of taking Arendt politically, but I do not think anyone claims she advocated Revolutionary Terror or was unimpressed by the duration of the American constitutional experiment.
Looking at examples of liberal writing on ancient republics, Benjamin Constant put forward Athens as an example of a relative degree of individual liberty and commercial spirit in antiquity, and therefore the most acceptable example of liberty of the ancients for an advocate of th liberty of the moderns. That is the intense political life and intrusive demands for 'virtue' in antique republics had some mitigation in Athens, because of its more 'modern' aspects of individuality and a contractual market society. Sparta could be said to be more Roman than Athens, with its emphasis on the absoluteness of laws and the separation of powers between public bodies, rather than the exercise of a unified popular political will, but does not fit with what Pettit wants from a model republic.
Montesquieu is maybe closer to Pettit's assumptions than Constant was, as he was clearly suspicious of the demands of ancient republics on individuals, which he compares with those of a religious community. The problem there is that Montesquieu does not exactly go for a Roman model, as he sees Rome as moving from oppressively virtuous early republic to corrupted republic, and expresses preference for the commercial trading republic of the Carthaginians. Even more significantly, Montesquieu was an enthusiast for Gothic liberty, as in the liberty of German tribes living in the forests of northern Europe during the peak of the Roman Empire. In Montesquieu's time those tribes were understood as simple republics in which any prince was a war leader and judge only, elected by the people. There is an idealisation of the German forest tribes going back to Tacitus' use of them as reminders of early Roman liberty and virtue in the time of the corrupting emperor system.
So Montesquieu's understanding of liberty free from the seminarian constraints of antique republics is a monarchy, particularly the French monarchy stretching back to the Germanic Frank Clovis, which incorporates a Gothic liberty from the ancient teutonic forests. That form of primordial republican liberty is incorporated into the honour and cultivated individualism, of modern monarchy with the assistance of revived Roman law. At this point, we may be back with Pettit's Roman republicanism, but with the encumbrance of Germanic republicanism and hereditary or at least aristocratic dominated offices that defend law and liberty. Montesquieu's account is notoriously difficult to sort out, but has distinct resemblance with Vico's understanding of 'human monarchy', and is along with Vico part of a way of fusing monarchism and republicanism, or fusing violent primitive liberty with laws and moderating institutions.
Germanic and Carthaginian republicanism deserve a place in thought about types of republicanism, at last where any kind of historical (or genealogical) approach to political concepts is in play. The example of Sparta rally ought to be considered in relation to Rome as many have done so since Polybius. There are other historically significant examples, but that will have to wait for another time, but Sparta, Carthage, and Germanic examples of republicanism are all significant, as is the general variety of ways in which modern thinkers about political liberty have taken and combined these ancient examples.
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