alt Hacker NewsIt highly depends. Everything from "monarchy" to "indirect democracy".
Even the Americans don't elect their president directly, they have a special council inbetween to distribute more power to the sparsely populated states.
Russia is a direct democracy (the people do directly elect their leader) but also the example of why technicalities like that make no difference in how fair politics are.
Who, in Europe, even knew they were getting a de facto president who they could not choose? This is meant to be a rationalised organisation with lofty egalitarian ideals, and yet it has to struggle to compete against descents into chaos and corruption in USA and Russia.