It's very easy to confuse democracy with mob rule , right? I remembered an English class proverb by George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm , who also warned, "Beware lest democracies may become tyrannies." It was most likely the theme of Animal Farm when the pigs took over the farm and made it worse than their human owners. Now, how do we define democracy? Most people just say that it's the rule of the majority. However, the Council of Europe website would give us what democracy really means: The word democracy comes from the Greek words " demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as "power of the people" : a way of governing which depends on the will of the people. There are so many different models of democratic government around the world that it is sometimes easier to understand the idea of democracy in terms of what it definitely is not. Democracy, then, is not autocracy or dictatorship, ...