To be fair, pure democracy in Athens led to all kind of disasters as the crowd was easily swayed by demagogues like Alcibiades, leading to disastrous foreign adventures like the sicillian expedition in the Peloponnesian war (A war like no other is a great book on this). It's hardly a model we should emulate.

I prefer the mediated kind of democracy (in spite of the tendency to oligarchy) as at least it tempers the rule of the mob.