I read his article, but I didn't get his point, and you're basically explaining the reason why. He is not correct in lumping all those together in his analysis

I read his article, but I didn't get his point, and you're basically explaining the reason why. He is not correct in lumping all those together in his analysis. Maybe he could say "Western democracy". I agree that these institutions existed before democracy. But you would also be hard-pressed to find democracy without them, but it's not because democracy would require these institutions to exist. I can perfectly imagine a democracy in Islamic society with Sharia law, that doesn't have those institutions. As long as everybody can secretly vote, with equal vote, they know what they vote about, and it's impossible to restrict voting of other people by voting, it's democracy in my books. However, I don't think it would last too long. The other innovations are probably so useful for majority of people that they would very quickly (and democratically) agree on implementing them. That's why we never see anything like this in the real world (in the real world probably both things co-evolve). In other words, I see democracy vastly more important than those institutions, because implementing democracy itself will probably lead to implementing these institutions, while the opposite is not true.