Depends on your perspective. Democracy is essentially an outcome and dynamic state of a society, formed by the opinions and opinion driven actions of individua

Depends on your perspective. Democracy is essentially an outcome and dynamic state of a society, formed by the opinions and opinion driven actions of individuals. So in a different culture with different "influencers" at the top, and therefore a different public sphere, the outcome can be something completely different from what most people associate with democracy (positive and negative freedom). It's basically a shared experience. Religion was first as centralizing force, then came the traditional mass media and now there is social media and individual influencers, everything is getting less gated. The dilemma is that most people didn't learn the true hierarchies in school, or how the system and democracy really works and what holds it together. And those who research it on their own may easily drift off into conspiracy stuff, because conspiracies feed the people with tiny bits of the truth (among many lies) they weren't meant to know.