Much of Robert Graves novels on imperial Rome under Claudius revolved around reintroducing the republic. Was that an invention by Graves, or were there really important and powerful individuals who worked to reintroduce the republic? Realistic, would it have been possible to reintroduce a liveable republic, or was it an idealistic but foolish dream?
The Republic allowed all the nobility the chance to get their snouts in the trough. The Empire limited it to one clique and left the rest exposed to their mercy. Idealism had nothing much to do with it.
Claudius was somewhat of a paranoid (with some cause) in real life. It is unlikely that he would have really been sanguine with turning power over. Especially given that his continued existence would be intolerable to the new powers that be. The plan in the book, with Nero as the adopted “bad emperor” and Britannicus as the savior/good emperor/republican is most likely a fabrication.
I think restoration of the republic was unlikely for a wide number of reasons. The republic itself was the outgrowth and evolution of a variety of coping structures from different periods.
The Republic had a number of parallel power structures (the Senate, the Consuls, the Tribunes of the Plebs, Dictators as necessary, the censor), with a less than settled agreement of the relationships between them. Who can veto what. The Senate thought it had the final say on everything, the tribunes and others disagreed. Once various parties started going outside of the tacit rules of engagement, it was very hard to restore amity (or even conversation).
The executive in Roman republican government was tied to the military service, military performance, and to (private) public works expenditures. Factionalism becomes deadly to the state when both sides have generals with armies principally loyal to Rome as embodied by those generals, and the factions attempt to screw over the generals and troops with the wrong party label.
The number of civil wars and military dictatorships in the late republic was fairly substantial. The principate/empire “worked” in ways that the late republic did not. While the senate at times tried to exert control by selecting/appointing the new emperor (with a variety of results), it made few attempts to avoid getting a new one.
Economic and social forces tend to come first and only be reflected politically later. By the time of Augustus, the society of small farmers and citizen-soldiers that had formed the backbone of the Republic was gone, replaced by the professional (increasingly mercenary) Legions and the wealthy whose plantations were worked by slaves from the conquered provinces. Rome had basicly gone into the “Empire business” by that time.
The only way the Republic could have been restored would have been if slavery had been outlawed, the Legions abolished, universal militia service for all Roman citizens restored, and Rome pulling back from the frontiers and only going to war defensively. But this would have required an almost suicidal desire to tear down the society that they had built, and would have required a historical and socio-economic awareness that simply hadn’t been developed yet. Tthe Romans were simply responding to mid-term necessity without seeing the long term; we have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.