define democracy and provide the basic elements that are needed for democracy to flourish.
Yet the theory of modern democracy was not formulated until the Age of Enlightment (17th/18th centuries), when philosophers defined the essential elements of democracy: separation of powers, basic civil rights / human rights, religious liberty and separation of church and state.
Freedom and democracy are often used interchange-. ably, but the two are not synonymous. Democracy is. indeed a set of ideas and principles about freedom, but it. also consists of practices and procedures that have been. molded through a long, often tortuous history. Democracy is the institutionalization of freedom.