I think it would be fair to say that any Democracy past a certain size (and that size is probably not going to be much bigger than a medium sized city) is going to have parts of it that will not be exposed to public scrutiny and operate independently of the public will.

I'm pretty sure the majority of Danes would be against helping the U.S spy on other EU nations. But it was done because the country was not asked. There are of course other things that the government wants to do that they are prevented from by popular sentiment.

Both Autocracy and Democracy are present in any system, their distribution just changes due to circumstances.

Any state which enforces private land tenure in a non-reciprocated manner will tend towards autocracy over time. A distinguishing feature of high functioning republics is the ability to organize reliable public assessments of direct taxes on landed property within their borders. Under corrupt governments the assessments are never kept up to date and the nobility is given arbitrary and excessive privileges and exemptions to shift direct contributions to the least advantaged members of society. Maybe 50% of local governments and 20% of regional states in the U.S. are high functioning. The federal government was able to organize assessments in 1798, 1813-1816, and 1861 but is generally not high functioning.

> Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies?

Such an agency operating outside of the visibility of those voting is by definition not democratic. But that doesn't mean the rest of the democracy isn't there.

Just because the rest of the democracy is there doesn't mean the country is actually a democracy though, if the machinery of democracy exists but can't control and regulate the totality of the state.

IMHO, people prefer "trust, but check" over "blind trust". You can cast a referendum, if you are unsure. Hitler was elected in a democratic way, so it's possible that your democratic ally can turn into a totalitarian enemy at a next election.

Also, it is easier to check for Russian spies in a government from outside, than from inside. For example, soviet agent in Germany government, called "D-104" in memories of Yurii Drozdov, is still not found. I suspect Schröder, which works for Russian Gasprom now, but he may leave a replacement agent, to work after him. (Merkel?)

> countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies?

Such countries do not extend democratic values to ~other countries~. In fact, they may actively erode democracy in other countries.

If the power structure of a country no longer extends democratic values to other countries, the power structure ~may~ no longer understand democratic principles and have deep problems within its own nation as a result.

I think any moderately sized nation state quickly develops an inner state with autocratic tendencies. Democracy combined with a healthy press and strong protections on free speech are a strong check on the domestic powers of this inner state, but are much less effective in curbing the autocratic inner state overseas.

The nation state hasn't ceased to be democratic, but its internal autocratic state is running amuck overseas.

I think it's probably most accurate to say that there are democracies of different sizes. Your country is a more of democracy as more people have equal agency over their government. This obviously has never happened to a complete extent, and it's still an open question whether that should happen. But a discrete separation between "democracies" and "not democracies" will run into these sorts of problems in any case.

Democracy is a lie which was constructed to pacify the people. If you think you have some control, you feel more free and superior to others.

The word democracy derives from the Greek words for ‘People’ - ‘Demos’ and ‘Power’ - ‘-cracy’. So, literally: ‘people power’ or ‘power of/to or government of the people by the people’. Originally, very roughly speaking, it was an alternative form of government to being ruled by tyrants. If you are seriously disparaging one of the many forms in which human beings have tried to implement some form of democracy, arguably all of which have some flaws, and not just shilling for some authoritarian interest or other (or your own, possibly benighted, or imagined self-interest?), then you need to be more specific. (P.S. Churchill had some useful thoughts on the matter :)

The Greek concept of democracy looked nothing like the modern republic. A Greek democracy did not elect legislators: that function belonged to the people assembled as a whole. Nor did it elect ordinary magistrates, who were instead selected by random lot from lists of willing volunteers in a process now called "sortition." The rationale behind sortition relied on the notion that the ordinary business of government was mundane and required no special competence or knowledge aside from the ordinary citizen's share of justice and patriotism. The ancient Greek democracy elected only ambassadors and generals, people in whom authority needed to be concentrated and yet who also had to be competent rather than simply willing. There was an ancient form of government in between tyranny and democracy: oligarchy. In an oligarchy, a few people were selected to make decisions for the rest. There were in different cities various methods of selecting the oligarchs, but popular election was certainly among them. The downside to regularly scheduled, popular elections, in contrast to the random chance of democratic sortition, was that the expectation of elections generated political parties or factions to attempt to influence or control the outcome of the popular election and thus control the oligarchy. This was, of course, impossible in a democracy, since no election was held: sortition makes partisan politics pointless. In short, the reason that the word "democracy" is never found in the American Constitution is that America was never intended to be a democracy in the ancient sense, the only sense in which the Founders understood the term. The modern "democracy" of an elected legislature and elected magistrates is, in fact, what the Greeks would have termed an oligarchy.

As you suggest, ancient Athenian democracy bore little resemblance to modern forms of representative democracy and no doubt appears very limited/odd to modern sensibilities. What you wrote doesn’t make what I stated about the derivation of the word any less true though: https://www.etymonline.com/word/democracy All forms of democracy so far have been hefty compromises in one way or another and so will all be in the future, short of some sort of technological marvel I suppose. Different countries, constitutions etc. rebalance the mechanisms in one way or another, as more or less direct/representative forms of democracy inevitably have consequent drawbacks... Parliamentary democracies, republican democracies etc./all the various voting mechanisms etc., all are compromises designed to try and strike some sort of balance or confer some practical advantage. You can argue that some are antiquated, some unfit for purpose, but most IMHO. are better than the alternative. The fundamental problem with oligarchies/tyrannies/polyarchy/plutarchies/‘pick-your-archy’ is surely that you might (and almost inevitably eventually will) get a bad apple/apples. ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely’ etc. As I understand it, the U.S. is a kind of republic (a ‘federal presidential constitutional republic’ according to Wikipedia :) and Madison/Jefferson/the founding ‘dudes’ tried to strike some, as they viewed it, balance between representative democracy and an appointed/elected executive, as you’re no doubt aware… You can argue it was/is deeply flawed and that their efforts to avoid partisan politics/entrenched political parties have failed/there are many problems with lobbying groups/corruption etc., but I would suggest that there exists at least some opportunity to debate and consequently change representatives/legislate a hopefully better way of doing things? It beats the alternative/being arbitrarily ruled by a bonkers king/some tinpot dictator/absolute/hereditary monarch! Perhaps the democratic process ought to always be a work-in-progress, a compromise that we tweak and balance with other mechanisms to eg. protect minority rights or to provide long-term stability and short-term effective and efficient decision-making through discussion rather than dictat? I would suggest that there are decisions best taken at a very direct/local level and others that are best dealt with globally/even on a more technocratic basis… The voters ideally should be educated enough to be able to thoroughly understand the process and enabled and enfranchised wherever possible to engage with it fully… “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” - from a speech in the Commons by Winston Churchill (a man with many imperfections! :) https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government

Podcast on the subject: Democracy http://share-episode.podcasts.coderocker.de?t=Democracy&el=h...

…and another: Wynton Marsalis on democracy as jazz and The Ever Fonky Lowdown http://share-episode.podcasts.coderocker.de?t=Wynton Marsalis on democracy as jazz and The Ever Fonky Lowdown&el=https://chtbl.com/track/DE4279/cdn.simplecast.com/audio/942a...