a. Government by the people; that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in the people as a whole, and is exercised either directly by them (as in the small republics of antiquity) or by officers elected by them. In modern use often more vaguely denoting a social state in which all have equal rights, without hereditary or arbitrary differences of rank or privilege.
b. A state or community in which the government is vested in the people as a whole.
And then I thought this second definition was particularly interesting...
2. That class of the people which has no hereditary or special rank or privilege; the common people (in reference to their political power).
1827 H. Hallam Constit. Hist. Eng. II. xii. 322 The power of the democracy in that age resided chiefly in the corporations.
1841 T. P. Thompson Exercises (1842) VI. 151 The portion of the people whose injury is the most manifest, have got or taken the title of the ‘democracy’. For nobody that has taken care of himself, is ever, in these days, of the democracy..The political life of the English democracy, may be said to date from the 21st of January 1841.
1868 Mill in Eng. & Ireland Feb., When the democracy of one country will join hands with the democracy of another.
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