I'm playing Horatio with no expansions.

When I switched from dictatorship to republic government, I noticed that a bunch of laws seem messed up.  It kind of looks as if you've gradually been making balance changes to the main laws but haven't updated any of the republic versions in the process, and so several of them don't match or are actually weaker instead of stronger.

Two party-independent laws, the Safe Skies Bill and Wartime Taxes Bill, do not even exist under republic government.  Instead, republic has access to the Senator Bob Act and Parks Not Quarks, neither of which existed in my previous government.

Cram Exam Act changed from only needing "functional" political experience to needing "entrenched" under a republic.

All 6 parties' auto-enacted laws are weaker now that I have the republic's "stronger laws" bonus:

Dust Windfall (Industrialist) effect shrinks from 25% to 15%

Oracle of Science (Scientist) loses 1 science/pop

Right Thing Rule (Pacifist) shrinks from 2 dust/pop down to 1

Hardship Ready (Ecologist) loses 15 happiness

Righteous Fury (Religious) loses the hero xp bonus

Jingoist Joy Bill (Military) loses the bonus to system defense manpower (the icon of a person with a bomb)

Safe Skies Bill and Wartime Taxes Bill: These laws are dictatorship-exclusive.

Senator Bob Act and Parks Not Quarks: These laws are not available only when your government type is dictatorship.

Forced laws: Dictatorship has enhanced version of forced laws while republic can use enhanced version of independent (doesn't include minor faction collection bonus laws) and partisan laws. Therefore, republic has forced laws relatively weaker than dictatorship has. But both governments have stronger version of forced laws in comparison with democracy/federation.

As Paradoxible said, Dictatorship receives the strongest version of the Forced Laws in the gam. However, all other shared laws (be they independent or party bound) are stronger in the Republic government. (I say "shared laws" as the Minor Faction laws are exempt.)

And how would someone who is playing the game know any of that?

Sounds like 

• Cram Exam is still an actual bug
• Dictatorship needs its in-game description updated to mention that it has stronger forced laws (that's a major government feature, and there's plenty of space)
• The other mentioned laws should probably have some kind of in-game explanation of their rules, too

That could be a nice QoL update alongside with the more relevant issues.