> the membership is in charge. Motions, after being discussed and amended, eventually come down to a vote of the group
Strictly speaking, this could be a subset of the group, so long as that subset is quorate. For some groups this quorate level is going to be a surprisingly small number of people.
Most nonprofit membership organizations in the US were run that way at one time. But since the 1960s, there are more self-perpetuating boards and other schemes for taking control away from the members. So people don't get practice at running a democracy. Which is a problem.