Democracy. The term, meaning "rule by the people" comes from two Greek words, dēmos, the people, and kratein, to rule. Small societies such as clubs and village meetings may be ruled directly by the people who compose them, at least in leisured circumstances, but generally democracy is representational, i.e., the people elect bodies such as Congress or Parliament to represent their will. Democratic forms of government were known in the ancient world but were by no means approved by either Plato or Aristotle. Plato regarded democracy as the worst of lawful forms of government and the best of unlawful ones and specifically placed it as but one step better than tyranny, toward which he held that it had a tendency to lead. Aristotle took it to be preferable to tyranny and oligarchy, yet with them a degenerate form of government. The seeds, although only the seeds, of modern democracy may be found in medieval political theory where (in the West only) the recognition of the competitive claims of Church and State led to the emergence of an awareness of the rights of the individual against both. After the Renaissance, the concept of democracy (often with a constitutional monarchy built into it) began to be seen by many at least as an ideal and eventually came to be developed in practice, although generally with caution and in limited forms. The perception of the importance of human freedom greatly fostered the development of democratic ideals. Both the American and the French Revolution were considered by their proponents to exhibit the ideals and foster the practice of democracy. They occurred, however, in circumstances very different from those that were later to develop. According to PLUS (Project Literacy United States), 23 million adult Americans are functionally illiterate (i.e., with basic skills at the fourth-grade level or below) and another 35 million have skills below the eighth-grade level. Of these adults 56% are under 50 years of age. Since according to the same body's report, the Constitution of the United States requires at least an eleventh-grade level to comprehend, the practice of representational democracy is bound to be very different indeed from what it was intended to be by the framers of that most treasured of national documents. So while democracy may be regarded as a safeguard against tyranny in its most flagrant forms and therefore as protective of human freedom, the wisdom of Plato's and Aristotle's judgments upon it must be seen to be at least as warranted today as it was to thoughtful people among the ancients. The recognition of this in no way denigrates the democratic ideal. 

Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1989

democracy : (nt.) janasammatapālana; pajāpabhutta.

A.P. Buddhadatta Mahathera, Concise Pali-English and English-Pali Dictionary [available as digital version from Metta Net, Sri Lanka]