Board Thread:Community Discussions/@comment-6218837-20150429175435/@comment-4964341-20150501074102

GuacamoleCCXR wrote: So, in general I did think this was a good post, but I'd like to point out that there's a little bit of confusion between form of rule and system of government. Democracy, for example, is a way to legitimise a govermental structure by sourcing its power from the people. It does not describe just what that structure is, hence, democracy is only a form of rule. A republic, on the other hand, is a system of government, because it actually entails a certain configuration of political bodies. This is why saying "democratic republic" isn't a redundancy, as only by using both terms you will accurately describe the political situation in, say, Germany.

Overall, I felt like OP mashed the two categories together, but it's not really a large issue. Actually, a democracy is also a form of government in which all the citizenry vote on every issue (essentially what we have now on this wiki, and not actually seen since, like, ancient Greek city-states). A republic is a form of government in which elected officials vote on the legislature for the people whom they represent (i.e. a United States Senator for the people who elected him).