People are NOT in charge of their governments, even their governments boosting how "democratic" they are. It is bad surprise to us, ex-commie countries, that the "democracy" in whole West is more like "carte blanche" for 4 years. That politicians get their votes and then terrorize their voters with things they promised not to do for whole 4 years. And and counteraction is almost impossible. That law and international agreements has no meaning at all. That even basic human laws and basic principes like "innocent until proven otherwise" is abandoned now in the "free" world.
I do believe that the "democracy" need few radical tweaks to work again. The first step is the possibility for voters to any time call for a distrust vote on any politician and when 50% + 1 vote that put the person in question in charge are reached, then the person will be removed immediatelly from the public office he attend.
Another tweak is money. Politics is about to serving people, not gain power/money. Hence politicians should have granted only all the living and work expenses, but not a single penny more. That should exclude certain types of people from politics, witch should be beneficial for the people. Also I would propose that politician should be only a married guy with whole family and age 60 years and older. These people have enought living experience and did not get spined easily into crazy things (wars) that did benefit only big biz, but hurt peoples (Vietnam war, Iraq war, etc).
Third tweak is media. Not only they lie (remember, all you see in Tube is just a illusion!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CyM4fi9Xqbo ), but also they pursue their owners interests and these interests are usualy opposite peoples interests. It is obvious that the big media players are need to be broken down to small, independent local news and mainly - they has to be like public service. Obviously they can't be privately owned, for beforementioned reasons. They has to run on public service basis with granted funds, so they can critic openly and harshly the state, politicians and any company. No adverts of any kind at all permited to restrict - or at least lower - the influence of big biz on media.
That can bring the meanings and standards of democracy back to the reality. These tweaks as well, as the basic human rights, the freedom of expression and others are beyond the debate or politics and are not a subject to change.
That should be able to do the trick, IMHO.