A republic is a form of government (and a state so governed) in which power is derived from the consent of the governed. There are no vested offices. The word is derived from the Latin res publica, or "public affair," and suggests an ownership and control of the state by the population at large. The concept of democracy, however, is not implicit to that of a republic. The republican form of government may involve a limited democracy, where participation is available only to a limited group of people. Republicanism In the late 18th century, the word referred to the principles and practices appropriate to a government in which ultimate authority resides in the people and in which elected officials and representatives are responsible to the people and must govern according to the law. But republicanism involved more than eliminating a king and instituting a representative government. It also involved a critique of monarchical society. A republican society was to be a society free of the corruptions, pretensions, and rigid class stratification found in Europe. Monarchical societies maintained their authority through hereditary privilege, patronage, standing armies, and a religious establishment. A truly republican society, in contrast, depended on the independence and the moral virtue of its citizens. At the time of the American Revolution, the only republics in the world were tiny--the city-states of Italy and Switzerland and the Netherlands. Larger republics, like England during the mid-17th century, had collapsed into dictatorship. One of James Madison's goals in devising the U.S. Constitution was to create a republic that would endure despite its large size and that would not have to depend entirely on the virtue of the country's leaders. In the Federalist Papers, he argued that in a large republic, diverse and conflicting interests would balance and neutralize each other. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=288

Democracy The word democracy originates from the Greek ηδμοκρατíα from δημος meaning "the people," plus κρατειν meaning "to rule", and the suffix íα; the term therefore means "Rule by the People." The term is also sometimes used as a measurement of how much influence a people has over their government, as in how much democracy exists. Iroquois Confederacy The Iroquois Confederation is the oldest association of its kind in North America. Although some scholars believe that the Five Nations (Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Seneca) formed their Iroquois League in the 12th century, the most popular theory holds that the confederation was created around 1450, before Columbus’ “discovery” of America. These five nations bore common linguistic and cultural characteristics, and they formed the alliance to protect themselves from invasion and to deliberate on common causes. In the 18th century, the Tuscarora joined the league to increase the membership to six nations. (See: http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24099 and http://www.ces.sau48.org/iroqconf.htm) Pirates 18th-century pirate constitutions established democratic governance for their roguish commonwealths. Crewmembers elected their captains by popular vote and democratically removed captains who dared to misuse their power. Because of this surprising system, far from tyrannical, the average 18th-century pirate captain was a dutiful, elected executor of his constituents’ will.   Historical pirates understood what James Madison pointed out in the Federalist Papers—that the most important check on leaders’ use of power is society’s ability to select them. But pirates recognized this, and implemented it, more than half a century before Madison put pen to paper. (See: http://news.ufl.edu/2006/06/28/pirates/)