Civic virtue in the context of "Civil society"

Classical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as liberty as non-domination, self-government, rule of law, property-based personality, anti-corruption, abolition of monarchy, civics, civil society, common good, civic virtue, civic participation, popular sovereignty, patriotism and mixed government.

The causes and mechanisms of the fall of the Western Roman Empire are a historical theme that was introduced by historian Edward Gibbon in his 1776 book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Though Gibbon was not the first to speculate on why the empire collapsed, he was the first to give a well-researched and well-referenced account of the event, and started an ongoing historiographical discussion about what caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The traditional date for the end of the Western Roman Empire is 476 when the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed. Many theories of causality have been explored. In 1984, Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new theories have since emerged. Gibbon himself explored ideas of internal decline (civil wars, the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions) and of attacks from outside the empire.

Many historians have postulated reasons for the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Their conclusions usually belong in two broad schools: (1) external factors, such as military threats and barbarian invasions or (2) internal factors, such as a decline in "civic virtue" and military and economic capability. Most historians believe that the fall was due to a combination of both internal and external factors, but come down more heavily on one or the other as the most important cause of the fall. Modern scholarship has introduced additional factors such as climate change, epidemic diseases, and environmental degradation as important reasons for the decline. Some historians have postulated that the Roman Empire did not fall at all, but that the "decline" was instead a gradual, albeit often violent, transformation into the societies of the Middle Ages.

Republicanism is a political ideology that encompasses a range of ideas from civic virtue, political participation, harms of corruption, positives of mixed constitution, rule of law, and others. Historically, it emphasizes the idea of self-governance and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or aristocracy to popular sovereignty. It has had different definitions and interpretations which vary significantly based on historical context and methodological approach. In countries ruled by a monarch or similar ruler, or with a monarch whose role is primarily ceremonial such as the United Kingdom, republicanism is simply the wish to replace the hereditary monarchy by some form of elected republic.

Republicanism may also refer to the non-ideological scientific approach to politics and governance. As the republican thinker and second president of the United States John Adams stated in the introduction to his famous A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, the "science of politics is the science of social happiness" and a republic is the form of government arrived at when the science of politics is appropriately applied to the creation of a rationally designed government.

The City Beautiful movement is a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. It was a part of the progressive social reform movement in North America under the leadership of the upper-middle class, which was concerned with poor living conditions in all major cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Washington, D.C., promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations.

Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life, while critics would complain that the movement was overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of social reform. Jane Jacobs referred to the movement as an "architectural design cult."

The beer riots in Bavaria happened between 1 May and 5 May 1844, beginning after King Ludwig I decreed a tax on beer. Crowds of urban workers beat up police while the Bavarian army showed reluctance to get involved. Civil order was restored only after the King decreed a ten percent reduction in the price of beer. Following the Revolutions of 1848, Ludwig I abdicated in favour of his son, Maximilian II.