“You know, we don’t live in a democracy because a democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner. OK? It’s not just majority rule. It’s a constitutional republic. The founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition of what a civil society is supposed to look like. What’s happened, Alex, …
I just looked it up and did not find a concise definition. According to the German bpb even dictatorships can be republics.
https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/lexika/lexikon-in-einfacher-sprache/250057/republik/