Very well said. However a true functioning democracy require more than these unfortunately. At least in order to have those well functioning institutions you ne

Very well said. However a true functioning democracy require more than these unfortunately. At least in order to have those well functioning institutions you need an entity that can expose groups who have hijacked them. Countries like Turkey who have been on the losing side of power game for at least couple of centuries, or countries like Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Greece that were non-existent before but either their borders drawn with a ruler on the map or too weak to stand alone are under heavy influence of foreign agents/powers. Heck, even US is under heavy influence of interest groups to the extent that public was sold on to the idea of Iraq's invasion. Even then most Americans opposed the Iraq war but their voices were drowned by heavy media bombardment. Take Iran. Once they had their own elected government but CIA staged a coup [1] and installed Shah. Think for once, if a country is run with democracy, but a real one, would they throw a democratic country and install a dictator instead? US is a very strong country in many respects and hides many large cracks. Don't be fooled by its looks. You need more than institutions to have a real democracy. It is not easy to have people's voice heard. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role-1953-iranian-coup https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-rol...