Notwithstanding all other possible links between Republic and Democracy, the intent of this article is to point out a conceptual gap between the combinations of normative ideals related to those two institutional arrangements, therefore highlighting the difficulties of making them interchangeable terms. Apart from a few exceptions (two of them being subject of our analysis here), the authors who try to rescue the Republican tradition of political thought pay almost no attention to those difficulties, assuming immediately the continuity from what they call "Democracy" to what they call "Republic". This requires a critical examination in order to better access how the typical topics of the classical Republicanism can still help us to illuminate, and even innovate, the contemporary democratic thought and experience.
Democratic theory; Republicanism; State; Civil society; Revolution