I don't think it's quite as clear as that. Let's start with the simple case: in a democracy, people vote to affect policy. There's a referendum, and the will o

I don't think it's quite as clear as that. Let's start with the simple case: in a democracy, people vote to affect policy. There's a referendum, and the will of the majority of the people voting in it determines the outcome. Easy. Now, going in a more sci-fi direction, as a thought experiment: imagine that an evil mastermind invented mind control, and used it to ensure the majority of people voted a certain way in said referendum. Technically, I guess this would still be a democracy -- but in name only. In reality, the will of a single person determines the outcome. Pulling back into reality, obviously we don't have mind control, nor an evil mastermind concocting schemes. We do know that if trusted people in positions of power abuse that power to outright lie, and spend very large sums of money to pursue a specific goal, then the will of these people will end up having a noticeable effect on the will of the population. If someone manipulated you and convinced you of something that wasn't true for their own hidden goals, is it still really your will that you're enacting by voting for it? or have you been tricked into enacting someone else's will? So while by a surface definition of democracy, any of the above processes are democratic because they allow people to vote, a functional democracy relies on a well-informed populace -- we knew this even in Jefferson's time ("wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government").