I am now going to correct an error that has existed for far too long.
Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
The key phrase here is ‘government by the people’. The literal definition of oligarchy is government by the few. As I previously said an oligarchy is a form of government in which the rulers are drawn from a dominant class or clique, hence government by the few. Therefore it stands to reason that a democracy is where the rulers are not drawn from a dominant class or clique, hence government by the people.
The definition of democracy then goes on to qualify it further by reference to ‘direct democracy': ‘exercised directly by them’ or by representation: ‘by their elected agents under a free electoral system’. There is a massive error here in this definition because it allows an oligarchy to creep back in. It doesn’t stipulate any conditions by which the elected agents rule. So in a multi-party system (the de facto standard for a democracy in practice) the clique, that is the winning party (which is of course a sub-clique of the main clique, that is the political class) appoints all government positions from its own party. This is what I call a representative oligarchy. Therefore a democracy must stipulate that the rulers are not drawn from a single clique like one political party.
The correct definition of democracy (based on the one above) therefore is as follows…
Democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system where the elected agents do not appoint the members of government from a clique.
So here the elected agents will be the winning political party in an election of course. And in my definition of democracy they will not be allowed to appoint ministers of state from only their own party. They will have to appoint from outside their own clique, i.e from other parties and in addition outside of the mega clique i.e the political class themselves.
It therefore follows that a democracy will involve a separation of party and state. Just like there was a separation of church and state in which the institutions of religion and state were kept separate, a democracy would not involve a political party holding the seat of government. Or prehaps more accurately said, a political party that appoints from itself only.