Galactic Republic

The Galactic Republic, also known as the Grand Republic or simply as the Republic, was a democratic union comprising thousands of star systems spread across the galaxy. Old Republic was a term affixed to the pre-modern Republic, and the modern Republic that was supplanted by the Galactic Empire. In addition, the term High Republic denoted the era in which the Republic reached the zenith of its power from 300 BBY to 82 BBY. The Republic was founded many millennia before the Battle of Yavin, around the same time as the Jedi Order. The Galactic Senate governed the Republic under the Galactic Constitution, and comprised thousands of senators representing the Republic's member worlds. The Supreme Chancellor was the title of the Republic head of state, elected from ranks of the Senate to lead the government on Coruscant. An ecumenopolis or city-covered planet, referred to as Galactic City, Coruscant was the capital of the Republic and therefore the seat of the Senate.

Throughout most of its history as the dominant galactic power, the Republic did not style itself as a strong centralized government, but rather as a union of sovereign planets for the purposes of collective security and economic prosperity. It was said that its complete history could "fill a thousand libraries." In the last decades that preceded the rise of Emperor Palpatine's New Order, the Republic was a benevolent—though ineffectual—government tied up in layers of bureaucracy, hampered by political and corporate corruption. The Galactic Republic, which had existed for at least 25,034 years, was brought down by the Sith when they transformed it into the Galactic Empire. This, however, was just the first of seven regime changes that replaced the Old Republic over the next 157 years.