One of the problems is that the term "democracy" has been completely hijacked by liberal democracy and its media arms so that only democracy that looks like western bourgeois democracy is real democracy and everything else is authoritarianism.

You can even see the definition shift back and forth depending on how libs feel about the country in question. Japan is a democracy, except when a rich westoid is being put on trial for corruption, then it's a all sorts of unfair and authoritarian and their conviction rates are too high.