It's actually fascinating. I'm watching this documentary about it, I'm going to summarize, but keep in mind I'm probably having my point of view and I was coming here to ask questions about it, so I'm far from being a specialist lol Point is please don't take it for face value.

The word have been invented in Athens to describe a system that was radically different from what was before (tyranny, monarchism, oligarchy, aristocracy). Yet, it meant the power to the people of Athens - excluding women, foreigners and slaves, which means only 10% of the population had the actual power. Yet, it was what's called now direct democracy - you would, as a good citizen, go to the agora to discuss the affair of the city (politics). It was new for greece, but not for humanity - indeed, if aristocracy have been the trends for settled societies, nomads were living in what have been described as proto-democracies. For example, the iroquois were having assemblies and voted on matters of the tribe. Decisions needed unanimity. (btw if somebody with institutional access could send me https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/370672?journalCode=jnes, I'd be grateful).

Flash forward to revolutionary time, and to the French revolution (which influenced the American revolution a lot). Curiously enough, the "founding fathers" of modern democracy, the thinkers of American and French revolution - Robespierre, Marat for the french, Washington and Adams in America - were not defining themselves as democrats. They were defining themselves as republicans. But, on the other hand, they were accused (already lmao) by the conservatives to be democrats. Being called a democrat was, at the time, pejorative. In fact, the term "democracy" was having the same connotation as "communist" in today's america. Something that meant "chaos, unfairness, tyranny of the majority", and mostly used by those having the power and wealth toward the people. And actually, those founding fathers, often from higher educated classes, were themselves accusing some other factions, like the "enrages" (outraged, with more progressive, with more working class members), to be democrats, exactly like a nowadays neoliberals would threat berniebros as stalinists. On the other hands, the conservatives weren't republicans. They were for the king.

So it begs the question, how did we begin to define ourselves as democracy and, bonus question, how did we end up to the situation we are in today in those two countries, with a republican conservative party and (in the US) a democratic, liberal party? And where did they exchanges names?

Here's the beginning of an answer (I could honestly type all night lmao). First, let's note (and I honestly didn't know that), that those founding fathers were already politicans. The notion of an assembly, which characterize democracy, already existed of course. In the UK since the Carta Magna. France had the General States (etats generaux), and the british colonies had colonial assemblies. I was surprised too to learn america already had some sort of parliament, even before the Independance, that didn't have a lot of power, but still. They didn't want to give the actual power to the people. They wanted the power for their assembly, because they thought (I believe genuinely) it would be fairer to the people. But they came up with the idea that they were representing the people. And they, at first, gave the power to people like them. Landowners, the wealthiest without a title.

In the US, the first person who self-defined as a democrat was Andrew Jackson. He, a politician, had the genius to call himself a democrat, to claim to be for the people and against the aristocracy in Washington, against the bosses of the factory. He won. Not much changed, but democracy became a good way to stress the notion that the parliament represent the people. In the meanwhile, on the French side (and that's something that fascinated me as well), universal suffrage is a royalist invention. They wanted to bypass the assemblies, to give the actual power to everyday people so they could be "convinced" into electing a king. Instead, they elected a populist, Napoleon. This notion of populism, of being on the side of the people in opposition to an elite, is found in communists revolutions, but also in fascism and in liberal republics. Those notions gets very philosophical, this dialectic between individual freedom and duty to the collective, between wealth and power, between the one who decide and the one who obey (or not), and I don't pretend to have a real answer. What I can say is that those notions are very mobile and they can easily change from being evil to being ideal and vice-versa.

I'm still going to get a little political here, don't mind me (guess it's unavoidable when talking about democracy). All right, so democracy means "power to the people". Thus, it's a different notion from political representational system. Originally, the idea was to avoid this representation. For original democrats, the idea was to avoid having careers politicians and kings/tyrans by having direct assemblies and picking representatives randomly. In practice, nowadays states and parties are not democratic in a strict, original sense. I'd be grateful to hear opinions about that, I swear I tried to stay as neutral as possible above.

(http://izap4u.com/zap/zap-263-full-version/, sorry it's in french and it's a zap but if you watch after 10 minutes there's the documentary and it's subtitled).