What defines / is mandatory for democratic processes?

Oh dear! I hope you're are ready for this answer! :-D Everything you have cited is important. Yet, the list is necessary, but not sufficient. Sure, participation, as a form of feedback is a baseline, but a number of things make a democracy, true. One of which, is even more important than any of the other items on your list. 1. Human rights - no human rights, no democracy. Any country that attempt to impede the freedom to participate in the politics of their country, is committing a breach of human rights under the Universal Declaration. Without that, no democracy is a democracy. That actually leaves very few true democracies worldwide. 2. Judicial oversight, respect for the rule of law, nobody above it - A people who do not have recourse to an independent judiciary, are prevented from settling electoral fraud or illegality. If you have no ability to adjudicate on human rights, or a democratic result, that isn't subject to political interference, then you don't have a democracy (this creates a tension between constitutional law, parliamentarians and the judiciary - but none of them overrule the laws of physical :) 3. Right to expression, not persecution - Europe has this right on the whole. If you consider human rights and democracy as a hierarchy, you should never have a situation where the expression incites persecution of another, to the degree that it violates their human rights. Indeed, the salvatory clauses of Article 30 of the UDHR and Article 17 of the ECHR it makes it explicitly clear that nobody can use human rights, as a defence to denigrate human rights. So, if someone speaks as to incite the persecution of a subset of the population, then claims "Free speech", their expression has violated the other person's right to live without fear, FIRST! As a result, the secondary bar of free speech need not be adjudicated, since the expression violates an inalienable right (you can express any way you like, speech is just one method but you persecuted another's human rights, first. So lost the right to) 4. Disinformation and electoral fraud as serious criminal offence - In many countries, this is indeed the case. If you provably disinform, elections are annulled and rerun and sometimes, the perpetrators are brought to justice and even jailed. Similar in nature to electoral fraud. Remember that the impact of this can result in a direct violation of human rights in its own right, where the disinformation is used to then create a context of persecution and genocide. As has happened in many countries, including during WW2. It's fascinating to see that former colonies of the British Empire, can deal with this better than Britain can. There is an interesting comic called the "Paradox of Tolerance" that's worth looking up. https://skepchick.org/2017/08/po...

Hello Gordian, This is an interesting question. I am personally interested in software enabled direct democracy as model for future democratic systems. I feel Participation is the most important item in your list because wherever people do not participate, they do not demand for either Transparency or Options or better Processes. When people participate, they demand all the others things you listed. Democracy works best only when people actually work together in voting, even on smallest of issues. I do not mean voting as in electing representatives. That is an old system which I feel could be replaced with software enabled models that scale to include every individual - at least every individual should have access to voting.