Democracy and republic
- The term republic today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state.
- James Wilson - “a republican or democratic” government - “the people at large retain the supreme power”.
- Today’s modern representative democracies imitate more the Roman Republic than the Greek models because it was a state in which:
- supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and
- had an elected or nominated leader.