Democratic Republic

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The term "Democratic Republic" has formed part of several states' official names.

Today it is largely meaningless, due to the fact that many "democratic republics" were not liberal democracies, as well as the fact that many republics that are democratic don't use the title of "democratic republic" in their official names.

Both present-day and defunct Democratic Republics have included countries that had little or nothing in common with each other. The reasons why countries call themselves Democratic Republics are also very different from case to case, but the common denominator seems to be that all these countries were created as a result of a revolution or war of independence against a domestic or foreign regime that was widely seen as tyrannical, oppressive and undemocratic. Thus the new country gave itself the title of "Democratic Republic" in order to reflect the idea that a dictatorial regime had been overthrown and a new, democratic one was put in its place.

This may be the reason why Democratic Republics tend to be either ex-colonies (Congo, Sri Lanka, Algeria, etc.) who achieved independence after breaking away from an imperialist power, or communist states that were created after the overthrow of a capitalist regime (since communists regard capitalism as inherently undemocratic). In particular, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) gave themselves the title of "Democratic Republics" as a way of implying that their rivals - West Germany, South Vietnam and South Korea - were not democratic.

While these communist states are widely regarded as being dictatorships themselves, their use of democratic rhetoric and the term "Democratic Republic" are often cited as proof that democracy forms an integral part of communist ideology, and that even a dictatorship must claim to be democratic if it wants to call itself communist.