I would say that they are democracies today, but the closest thing to a clear binary distinction between democracy and not is where sovereignty is vested. I’m most familiar with the history of the UK; nobody would say that it became a democracy once King John signed the Magna Carta, and agreed to share sovereignty with the aristocracy, but we would call it a democracy today. It is technically a hybrid system, in which sovereignty is split between the king and the people. The king approves all acts of Parliament, but it’s a formality, and the king approves whatever acts the popularly-elected Parliament passes. It was a bit-by-bit transformation from monarchy to democracy. (And it is continuing its transformation in 2026 with the abolition of the last hereditary seats in the House of Lords.)

I get that it’s righteous to shit on the United States — because we mostly deserve it — but in this case it really was the first modern nation-state explicitly founded on pure, popular sovereignty. (As in, no monarch or aristocracy, not that everybody could vote.)