[yorwba]

The Magna Carta didn't result in anything resembling democracy, so it's not terribly relevant. The civil rights movement and the the end of apartheid may be better examples, but they both involve existing democratic institutions agreeing with the protest movements and passing legislation to fulfill their demands [1, 2].

My point is that although protests are a way to force a vote to occur, it's the actual act of voting that makes a democracy, and protests are neither necessary nor sufficient for that.

It seems to me that the protests in Hong Kong don't have to wait for the government to "allow" them to hold a vote, so long as they can manage the logistics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_South_African_apartheid_r...