Alternate Republics/Republicanism

What other examples of Republics can be found aside from the classical ones (ancient Greece, Italian city states, modern republics) around the world and history? I'm interested in those of non-western civilizations: I've have heard that India for example had some city-states that were governed as republics, but I didn't find much details. What other cases can be found around history, and how can we make them more prominent? In Asia, Africa, the Americas, wherever?

(note that I'm not looking for modern democracies specifically. Any form of goverment where the leaders are elected i.e. not a monarchy, will suffice.)
 
Well, "republic" is historically, a very vague name : basically a synonymous for "state".

Ancient greeks traditionally divided regimes into three kind, depending how many people ruled, no matter how liberal or authoritarian it was.

- Monarchies (a single ruler, even elected, would enter in this category)
- Oligarchies (what we would call a representative democracy would be considered as such, as representatives rule, not the people they represent)
- Democracies (a regime where every "citizen" takes part to the ruling process, and where representative aren't elected but randomly chosen).

Of course, it's less appliable as every western standard before XIXth century to other parts of the world, but in ancient times the difference was on who ruled rather than why they ruled.

Now, regarding non-western republics :

- Carthage and other pheonician cities, ruled by shophets whom exact role isn't really known, except that it seems to have been tied to former kingship judiciary roles that may have led Romans and Greeks to confuse them with actual kings.

- Some ancient Indian states had ruling councils, but there's few to no indication about how these councils were chosen : maybe based on clans.

- You had several republic, aka monarch free, entities in the ancient Arabo-Islamic world : Taifa of Cordoba, Republic of Salé. They eventually shared many features with other western patrician cities.
 
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