alt Hacker News> The ancient Roman republic (i.e. pre-Caesar) did just fine run by the senate without any emperor
If you don't count the 80 years of off and on civil wars and political and social upheavals.
> and sufficient to get their job done
Well they were extremely successful military, internal politics were a mixed bag and it slowly turned into chaos and constant gridlock as soon as they ran out of external enemies to fight.
Rome had an arcane deeply adversarial political system which basically relied different powerful men in the elite competing and keeping each other in check while trying to amass as much wealth and political power they could get away with (Ceasar was hardly an aberration besides just being way more successful than countless aristocrats playing the same game).
> effectively becoming the first emperor (despite no such position existing) by assuming the title of "dictator perpetuo" (perpetual dictator),
Sula did that first, in many ways Caesar just emulated him (of course the decision to not murder all of this potential enemies came back to bite him)
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Civil war. Social upheavals. Gridlock. Oligarchs.
Didn't the U.S. also have all those problems, despite having a president?
There was an assertion made in an ancestor comment that a committee without a leader can't function, but that doesn't seem proven by those problems in Roman history under their Senate, since the U.S. with a president had the same kinds of problems.
I assume other factors are at play, oligarchs for example. And I question the downside risk of having a strong presidency, cult of personality for example.
I agree that the term "did just fine" is subjective.
Sulla even managed to resign and survive, which I think is even more impressive.