What is democracy?

I originally wanted to write an article entitled: "Why doesn't democracy work?" and then I took a step back and thought about writing: "Does democracy work?" and then I took yet another step back and came up with this: "What is democracy?"

Simple question, huh? A democracy is the people electing the government, right? Except that's not true. There are all sorts of restrictions on the franchise. Nowhere, to the best of my knowledge, allows under-18s to vote. Most places don't allow prisoners to vote and in the UK the Royal Family and members of the House of Lords are disenfranchised. In the US (of all places) residents of Washington DC don't get a vote in federal elections. "Taxation without representation" as they say.

And then there is the question of when places became democracies (important for answering that second question)? When, for instance, did Britain become a democracy? Was it in 1970 when the voting age was lowered to 18? Or 1918, when some women and all adult men were allowed to vote for the first time? Or 1867 when the majority of men first got the vote. I believe that similar incremental moves happened in the US notwithstanding the whole Jim Crow business.

And that's just the voting. On the over-18 definition the Soviet Union and Iraq were democracies. Of course they weren't - there's more to it. You need a free(ish) press and a choice of people to vote for. Voting districts must be fair or, at least fair(ish). Did America or Britain cease to be a democracies when the candidate or party with the fewer votes won (as in 1951, 1974 and 2000)? I don't think so.

What this all adds up to is that there is no hard and fast definition. Which means it's down to feel. My "feeling" is that all Western countries (and that includes Australia and New Zealand) are democracies. I would probably lump in Central Europe as well. But that's the easy bit. Do we include Russia where Putin controls the media? Or Turkey where every so often the Islamic party gets banned? What about the West Indies? Or India? Does Japan, ruled for 50 years by the Liberal Democratic Party (with a break of 8 months in the early 1990s) count?

These are the sorts of things that can be argued about all day. But at some point for the purpose of being able to say anything useful you have to draw the line. For what it is worth I think my line will encompass the West and the Antipodes. We'll see.