Democracy is a governance model, which focuses on transparency and societies participation. It means, that executive, legislative and judiciary are separated powers, which have to be represented by different people. Usually it is considered best practice, when they interact transparently in formal processes.

As the 4th power a democracy considers the free press, which is able to report on the activities of any of the former 3 powers, so the rest of population has transparency about the representatives they vote for.

Populism is a form to strive for political power through creating an easy model of the good people and the bad establishment. And position oneself to represent the people to disqualify the establishment. Usually it is used to position one person in the center of everything, as we see it in many countries today, with the selfproposed saviors. (Bukele, Milei, Bolsonaro, ...)