Curious as to what governments have been more shaped by these politics in relatively modern times (late 1700's-present day) and how it shows. Ex. were the Russian Czars influenced when they ruled their monarchy? Was Bismarck's realpolitik an offspring of Roman politics?
Rome has been an undeniable set of influence of modern policies in governments. Democracy, albeit borrowed from Greek ideas, was probably the most successful democracy on a wide scale during the ancient world. Roman suffrage was wide scale and was pretty much better than American suffrage up until the 1960's;
Rome denied women voting rights, as did America.
Roman slaves and American slaves did not have voting rights.
Romans were otherwise not exclusive in aspects of race, or (generally) creed.
Rome left behind a great amount of influence in Europe with its unitary styled government, which is the predominant government style in many parts of the world.
Napoleon was obviously influenced by his knowledge of Roman history, which shows by naming himself Emperor, and Consul, two Roman terms used to describe high levels of honor, and (in Consul's case) office.
On a slightly more off-topic note, the terms Kaiser, and Czar were off shoots of the name Caesar (odd considering neither Germans nor Russians were really part of Rome).
The idea of the Cursus Honorum was a political "ladder" that made republicanism possible in Europe, it showed ideas of meritocracy and the ideas that the people held the power, not monarchs or the clergy.
Roman ideologies of denial and the separation of powers held true for many of history's greatest figures. George Washington denied power when it was offered to him, which seemingly mirrored Cincinnatus' return of power to the Roman people.
What the term "dictator" originally meant was an elected position in the Roman Republic. (The guy who speaks; root of which is dict. Like diction or dictate.)
The feudal system started in Rome as it expanded out of Italy. It was the early stages of feudalism when it was still feudal, but no nobility involved. People (ex. Marc Antony) literally fought over governorship for provinces where they were like their own little kings, especially once the Empire came into view.
The Roman legacy of imperial expansion is something that can be seen in modern history.
The French, for example, continually drew parallels between the Pax Romana and their mission civilisatrice as seen in the colonization of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Algeria was invaded in 1830 and, in 1833, King Louise-Philippe called upon troops “to complete the conquest of Algeria in order to return to the civilized world the bank of the Mediterranean, which had been in the grips of anarchy and barbaric methods since the fall of the Roman Empire.” When General Bugeaud was put in charge of the military in 1841, he immediately began to emulate Roman tactics which had been used against the Kingdom of Jugurtha – roughly located in present-day Algeria – in the second century BCE as described by Sallust in The Jugurthine War. To the ongoing critics of colonization, its advocates continually pointed out that it had taken Rome nearly two and a half centuries to subdue the region. In 1847, J.A.N. Pierre wrote that “it is our responsibility to raise Algeria from her fallen state, and to return her to her past [Roman] glory.”
The discursive framework of France inheriting and resurrecting the legacy of Rome was used to sell the colonial project and, once the question of whether to colonize had been settled (before Algeria was officially made part of France in 1848 there was still a great deal of debate on how deeply involved they should be), the question of how to colonize was influenced by the same discourse.
For example, the French sought to divide and rule, targeting the indigenous Berbers with assimilation in order to serve as a privileged class through which to indirectly rule the (largely Arab) population at large. In order to do so, they needed to make a clear distinction between the two. This was difficult since there were Arab speaking Berbers and Berber speaking Arabs. Either might be sedentary or nomadic. Because Arabs didn't arrive until the seventh and eleventh centuries, Roman descriptions of the native population were used to reinforce imagined ethnic distinctions.
In The Germania, Tacitus observed in the Berbers a Germanic sensibility, portraying them as “freedom-loving, having a strong sense of honour and a respect for the sanctity of home life, and practicing a primal form of equality.” They were depicted as a proto-civilized people “with a need for Roman tutelage to reach maturity.” Lapene, a lieutenant-colonel who produced a number of scholarly works during early occupation, built upon this work by claiming, among other things, to perceive a similarity between Berber and Roman dress. This was intended to distinguish them from the Arabs and doubly implied the need for French “tutelage to reach maturity.” Such understandings were used as the foundation for elaborate ethnic constructs. The Berbers were sedentary, superficially Muslim (and therefor more likely to convert to Christianity), and hard-working. The Arabs were nomadic, fervently Muslim, and lazy. None of these descriptors applied exclusively to either group, and yet the misunderstandings persisted. And it all began with Rome.
I'm sure the examples are endless, but there's one.