Democracy is not easy to implement, and there are still lots of problems in the places that do it best.
Democracy is not even easy to define, never mind implement. Most people, in their simplistic and ignorant minds, believe there is some ideal "democracy" which perfectly represents the will of the people. This is simply not so and in reality everybody believes true democracy is the system that gives the result they want. It is futile to want to reduce good government to a mathematical process. It is impossible and you immediately run into contradictions.
You tell me what result you want and I will give you a system that will yield that result.
Voting systems are full of contradictions. Voters preferences are not transitive. They may prefer A to B and B to C but that does not mean they prefer A to C and they may prefer C to A. Now what do you do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_paradox Depending on how you organize the voting and the districts you can radically affect the outcome of the election. The UK system of first past the post is completely different and yields different results than a system like in Spain where each province elects several representatives.
You can have the paradox where if you do smaller districts one party wins and if you have larger districts the other party wins.
Then you have different systems on how to allocate representation and usually they are not proportional to the number of votes.
Pretending that "democracy" is the answer to good government is foolish. A culture of respect, cooperation, morality will work well with any bad system while a culture of greed stealing and abuse of minorities will not work well no matter how democratic.
The notion that we elect politicians to do what we want is totally false even though they sell us that falsehood. The politicians elected know they owe their livelihood and loyalty to the party, not to the voter. Poor schmucks in Europe or America might like to think their vote has some influence in world affairs but in truth a butterfly flying in Africa can have the same effect.
There are so many levels of power between the voter and the government that all possible influence is lost along the way.
Other countries have different systems. In Afghanistan if you have a problem or concern you talk to your family's elder who will talk to the local leader and may be, if the issue deserves it, the matter will go further up. No voting needed. Each one trusts his family, his clan, his tribe and things get worked out that way. For them voting in western-style elections is meaningless.
Kind of like in the 1950s in New York if you had a store and you had a problem with criminals you did not go to the police because you knew it was a waste of time. No, you went to your local Cosa Nostra boss and told him about the problem you were having and he would take care of it.
Our governments like to sell us the notion that we elect them and they serve us but the reality is that we have close to no influence on what they do and, no matter whether they win or lose elections, they always win big in that they are always sucking at the teat of the state while we the people pay pay to keep them in good standard of living.
Finally, an anecdote which I always liked was the formula used in the middle ages in Aragon to swear fealty to the new king. The king at that time was "primus inter pares", first among equals, sometimes elected, sometimes hereditary. The nobles would say to the new king something like
We, who are worth as much as you,
and joined together more than you,
swear fealty to you as our king
as long as you respect our freedoms, privileges, laws and customs.
And if not not.
The formula is totally conditional on the king respecting the laws of the land and if not, then he is no longer accepted as king.
Today we can think that was a bad system but each noble lord was governing in his territory and his people looked to him for protection, not to the king.