Federal republic
At its core, the literal meaning of the word republic when used to reference a form of government means a country that is governed by elected representatives and by an elected leader, such as a president, rather than by a monarch or any hereditary aristocracy.This more decentralized structure helps to explain the tendency for more populous countries to operate as federal republics.[1] Most federal republics codify the division of powers between orders of government in a written constitutional document.While there are exceptions, the overall tendency is for federal republics to be larger, more populous, and more internally heterogeneous than unitary states, with such larger size and internal heterogeneity being more manageable in a federal system than in a unitary one.-Alain Berset -Ignazio Cassis -Albert Rösti -Élisabeth Baume-Schneider -Guy Parmelin -Karin Keller-Sutter -Viola Amherd State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (2003–2006)