Ok, but comparing 13th-century Europe to 20th-century Europe is apples to oranges. And there were 13th-century republics that committed atrocities as well. Venice paid the Crusaders to go fuck up some Christian towns down the Adriatic, because they had dared to break away. Then they paid them to sack Constantinople for the lulz and the gold. In the 1600s, they blew up the fucking Parthenon while fighting the Turks.
Moreover, you're treating this as an all-or-nothing situation: either full-blooded representative democracy in which the will of the masses dictates all, or an autocracy. What we were discussing is neither. If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could call it an oligarchy. If you were charitable, it would be a democracy with a limited electorate, similar to those of the 1700s.
In addition, there was nothing said of removing Congress from the equation. That could still be popularly elected, and provide citizens with a voice in government.
Look at the Westminster system -- people don't vote for Prime Minister, they vote for their local MP. (Now, the PM is selected by the majority party, so to some extent it is an indirect election.)
Hell, look at 16th-century Europe. My point wasn't about all or nothing, my point was that more democracy tends to put more balances and restrictions on individual leaders. It's a tendency, not an absolute. It's harder to lead one's nation towards greatness with as much vigor and fire as the emperors of antiquity, but it's also harder to be Vlad the Impaler. Not impossible, just
harder. Even in 13th century Europe there were councils and all that. Yeah, the Republics paid people to go fuck up other people. By and large they didn't fuck over their own people more than could be expected from merchants (and I'm not certain how much of that was will of the people and how much of that was the righteous Doge Enrico Dandolo
and his army of memes being possibly the most memorable leader of Venice ever).
I also personally don't really like the part of the parliamentary where you vote for a party and then the party decides who gets to be in office. I'd much rather just have compulsory mail-ballot voting.
Just don't go reactionary on us, RedKing >.>
In the medieval era, that would've been jack shit where extermination of populations was a regular thing that rulers conducted. Oh, that town we just took is being uppity? Yeah, burn it down, put the inhabitants to the sword, salt the earth for, oh, a dozen leagues around? That should serve as a decent enough example, I figure.
Civic rights? City charters?
Yes, because the King of [insert country] cared about those before he was forced to. And yeah, there certainly were nobles who cared and abided by it, but there's not much in the way of teeth, not reliably enough to be comfortable in that security. The Thirty Years war certainly took those into account (not being sarcastic either), and shit still got burned down plenty.