Democracy: Everywhere or Nowhere?

I recently engaged in a discussion in which someone favored the premise that democracy is inescapable, that it is the default of all societies because everyone allegedly "consents" to the social order by virtue of participating in it to any extent whatsoever. My premise (which is part of a paradoxical formula: "democracy is tyranny, democracy is impossible, democracy is liberty") is the exact opposite of this: that democracy is either impossible or illusory, that there has never been such thing as a democracy in the literal sense of the term, because all forms of government in history have been either defacto oligarchies or monarchies.

The only sense in which I can agree that "the people" inherently are reflected in the social order is only in the most superfluous sense: that popular ideas tend to dominate the psyche of the multitude, and most people asquiesce to the power structures. This is all that I get out of Etienne La Boetie's piece on "Voluntary Servitude" - it does *not* mean that the population literally "consents" to all of the decisions that are made, it simply means that they asqueisce precisely because of their situation and options, and that there is an element of ideological legitimacy. It isn't explicitly "voluntary" - no more "voluntary" than having sex with someone under the threat of being evicted is. Yes, rulership isn't maintained by physical force alone - but that doesn't mean that whatever doesn't involve physical force is "voluntary" by default (a problematic assumption of what tends to pass for the "voluntaryist" philosophy these days).

It is quite clear to me that "the people" don't actually have decision-making power over the bulk of what goes on in the society or over how the social order is constituted. This has essentially always been done by a defacto oligarchy, or a multitude of oligarchies. Those that actually make the rules and enforce them constitute a fairly small group of people in comparison to the population as a whole. To imply that everyone "consents" is to essentially stretch the meaning of "consent" to meaninglessness by eliminating the social context in which decisions are made from one's analysis, I.E. the context of people's options being coercively limited and the pre-existing structures into which they are simply born.

Even behind the most inclusive and so-called "democratic" states, I see an oligarchy and a heirarchy. I see a multitude that is almost entirely alienated from the process in which the rules are determined and enforced, with the power to do so delegated to a political elite that acts on the behalf of an economic elite. If anything, it is precisely this notion that "democracy" exists that seems to be an ideological tool of legitimacy, by propogating the illusion that the social order is structured on the basis of the multitude's decisions. To be sure, the multitude do make decisions every day that effect the social order, but these are incredibly marginal decisions (like buying a loaf of bread). When it comes to the decisions that actually have a significant impact on everyone (I.E. the political realm), this power is in the hands of an exclusive elite.