The thing that struck me most about Democracy when I first played it was this - no explosions (the fireworks when you win an election don’t count)
Reminded me of a game I played years ago, called Politika. Did anyone ever play it? The premise was that you were a person of influence in Russia just after the collapse of the USSR, and the aim was to take over the country by political means. Jaw-jaw instead of war-war, as Churchill would say. However, it was very badly done and ultimately unsatisfying.
It would be nice to see another game like that though, where its all about the wheeling and dealing rather than cranking out tanks.