[1] The song was written a few years before its release, approximately during the fall of the Berlin Wall, at a time when Cohen said he found himself reflecting on what democracy meant and where progress was being made toward it.
[2] American Songwriter contrasted "Democracy" with "Born in the USA", writing that Cohen uses a similar musical style to express "clear-eyed optimism" about the country's future, despite his description of the US as "the cradle of the best and the worst".
[8] Cohen refers specifically to racial division, the "patriarchal family", and the treatment of the homeless, suggesting, according to Spear, that the country must come to terms with the Sermon on the Mount which says that the "meek will inherit the earth".
Other drivers the song names are the collapse of autocratic communist governments, man-made environmental catastrophe, and the "wars against disorder" fought by a "nominally democratic" US state.
[6] According to political scientist Laura Grattan, Cohen places his hope not only in the ideal of democracy, but also in the "people that must carry forth its promise".