However, meaning is not a "transparent" representation for a definition. Meaning varies from culture to culture and differs between individuals. It is constructed and is interpreted by many contrasting views. What one chooses as a definition of democracy can cause a discrepancy for another with a conflicting point of view.
As for me a democracy is a government that is run by people. However, there is no government that can be perfect. The democracy in which we live has many strengthens and weaknesses. Neither strength or weakness out weight one another, but it is necessary to have both due to the varying definition. The politicians that we elect to run our government are human and they are susceptible to mistakes based on their own strength and weakness. We live in a representative democracy that means "we the people" are given the right to elect those who represent our believes and values.
Like I said above that all human are having tendency to make mistakes. And our government is run by the people who also are making positive and sometimes negative decision. The negativity tends to stick in our minds more than the positive. It is a kind of relationship, that people tend to remember bad more than the good. Almost everyone is having different opinion about life and government. We think differently about one problem and we want to solve the same problem in different way. For example, today in America the big topic is about 87 billion dollars that president Bush and his administration are now asking to "finish the job". Some people are agree and some are not. In my country we have proverb that says: "Every stick has two ends." And I can apply this saying to the situation with 87 billions dollars. Some people are saying that they want to see the money spent on education, towards cleaning up environment and other needs. Second half are saying that America went with war on Iraq, did not find any weapons of mass destructive, destroyed the country, and now they need to rebuild Iraq.