Either my Google-foo is weak or this is surprisingly hard to find on the internets.
The modern definition is trivialto find. But I have totally failed to find a history of the term itself (rather than the concept). Who coined it, and when? Is it a modern term or something the US founding fathers would have recognised?
This is somewhat triggered by the fact that the conservative leaning side of my FB feed has blown up recently with “the US was founded as a republic not a democracy!” memes of late. But don’t want to get into that argument.