[mseebach]

I you're taking "fear" slightly too literally for the purposes of this idea.

In a way, in the extreme, it is literal: in a healthy democracy, the citizens are so comfortable in their sovereignty that they would be willing as a last resort to forcibly, physically remove a despotic leader. But healthy democracies also have strong institutions that will check such a leader and eventually replace him peacefully - so this fear is mostly theoretical.

In the more symbolic sense, the "fear" is simply to be understood as the citizens having the absolute power to get rid of their leaders through the democratic process. If you want to be a leader, and if you want to stay in office, you basically have to keep the people happy (very broadly speaking, of course), there are no shortcuts in the long run for this. It's "fear" in the sense of "fearing the next election".

[dalbasal]

I agree the symbolic elements are important, but it often seems (from my distant perspective) like fairly blunt symbolism. Americans brandish muskets, and challenge the government to come get them. The French start building barricades.