That's actually kind of a fair point. Another thing to consider is that if you consider only the military (which wouldn't have been that weird for a pre-enlight

That's actually kind of a fair point. Another thing to consider is that if you consider only the military (which wouldn't have been that weird for a pre-enlightenment democracy), there are quite a few times during the empire that approached democracy (relative to the time period). I guess, really, I meant to imply some sort of a modern interpretation of democracy, wherein a single city (or military) voting for the entire empire wouldn't exactly cut it.