If you want to learn everything about democracy in the free online course offered by Stanford University go here:
https://www.coursera.org/course/democraticdev
This course was 11 weeks long and the one I took ran from Oct-Dec 2013.
For ten weeks I took notes and compared everything I learned with everything I was seeing in our government on both a provincial and federal levels.
To understate it, I was shocked, appalled, saddened, disheartened, insulted, and angry by the sheer incompetence of these elected individuals to manage such a simple task as doing what’s best for the people and the country.
Instead, they chose to serve corporations, rather than the people who pay their salaries and pensions. They chose venality and corruption over humanity and environment and the government watchdogs didn’t even attempt to bark or whimper to warn us.
What I see now: