Many countries include 'Democratic' or 'People's' in their names, even though they are not democratic and do not serve their people. Examples:
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Lao People's Democratic Republic
People's Democratic Republic of Algeria
Democratic Republic of the Congo
And German Democratic Republic (East Side) in 1949–1990.
None of these states are democratic, power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a small ruling elite. Who are they fooling with these names?
These seem to be distributed communities that internally use direct democracy (public assemblies). And I agree that direct democracy is a form of democracy. A very inefficient form that doesn't scale past the size of Greece or EZLN, but still a democracy.
