Thanks for the answer, but we haven't moved anywhere. Prussian state became a 'modern' (to its time) state not long before. HRE wasn't a state at all, and I'm n

Thanks for the answer, but we haven't moved anywhere. Prussian state became a 'modern' (to its time) state not long before. HRE wasn't a state at all, and I'm not sure one can really call an assembly of princes 'a sophisticated government'. It didn't have direct power over anything for the most time of its existence, and to tbomk never had functional executive bureaucracy. Pre-Christian Germanic 'ting' is as irrelevant to the problem of modern representative democracy as qurultay (which existed arguably for longer periods, but most Turkic countries are not democracies). Practically all significant tribes had a period when heads of clans had their gatherings to reduce amount of internal violence. Long story short there's a tradition (starting from Marx, if I'm not mistaken) to call it 'military democracy', but once you look at it closer, it's a clear case of misnomer. In addition, I dare to say, centralization doesn't really correlate with democracy.