"If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not

"If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want." The definition of democracy continues, pretty significantly: "... either directly or indirectly through elected representatives" Direct democracy is practised essentially nowhere (about 50,000 Swiss) and every other democracy in the world is representative. Clearly, when someone refers to 'democracy', with no other context, they're referring to a representative strain, and therefore the UK, USA, etc. are functioning democracies. If you want to discuss whether a representative democracy is worse than a direct one, we can have that debate, but don't try to distort things by making outlandish, untrue statements right off the bat.