Australia is identified commonly as a ‘democracy’. Such an identification can be questioned on two levels. One concerns whether or not Australia actually measures up to democratic standards. That level is discussed at length in later parts of this book. The other, dealt with in detail in this chapter, concerns the issue of what exactly constitutes a democracy. The chapter identifies seven different approaches to the ‘rule by the people’: direct participatory democracy, republican democracy, representative democracy, elite democracy, pluralist democracy, deliberative democracy and liberal democracy. Some of these approaches – for example, liberal and representative democracy – are consistent with each other. Others – such as direct democracy and elite democracy – cannot be reconciled. Whichever of these versions of democracy we adopt, this chapter suggests the difficulty of applying them to Australia without considering the impact of international factors such as globalisation and migration.