Democracy doesn’t entail having tons of minor roles being elected. That’s actually completely unique to the US, as far as I know. A lot of the positions that are elected in the US would be neutral civil servants in any other democratic country I can think of.

> neutral civil servants

Look I'm not saying we don't have these but the set of positions that are neutral is much smaller. Thanks to the political whipping boys de jour any position of power within academic or educational institutions has become politicized.