1.21 Democracy and republic (2)

According to Montesquieu:

[R]epublican government is that in which the body, or only a part of the people, is posessed of the supreme power,

… and thus may be either a democratic or an aristocratic republic.

• In other words, republic is the main category of government in which authority rests initially with the populace, but is composed of two subcategories, the democratic if all the people rule or the aristocratic if only a select number of them do.

• Before the establishment of the universal suffrage (XXth century), only a minority of people were citizens with votes in elections for representatives.