From this brief overview we can see that democracy may be a long standing idea but it has not always been considered in a positive light. What is more, Lincoln shows us that democracy can take many forms, but we can say that overarching these different forms is the basic idea that it is concerned with giving citizens political equality and placing power in the hands of the people rather than in the hands of elites. This remains the case today even if we now mainly understand democracy to be representative democracy.