In her excellent and provocative essay, Anna Drake states that "democracy benefits and harms people in selective ways". How can we unravel this statement more?
I doubt it, because there have to be background people who will be harmed. Lets not ignore the existence social classes (applying the conflict theory to the modern or democratic world) which can better explain the existence of societal harmful scenarios a country.
Starting with the recognition that democracy is a goal oriented process that nowhere operates in a perfect form, the democratic process is in constant revolution, actually experimenting with solutions and then modifying them to meet immediate goals.
This is to be contrasted with autocracy, where authorities alone, with little process, decide the the conditions of the society.
In democracy the society has accepted that solutions will not always meet their personal needs. They do not perceive this failure as harm, but the means to the greatest good.
In autocracy the only good is the need of the authorities, and any harm caused is irrelevant.
All forms of democracies, majoritarian and proportional representative democracies, and even direct democracies, remain government by the majority.
Some minorities will invariably be unrepresented in government, even though it can be mitigated by various types of federal systems and mechanisms. Some policies are then bound to harm them or some of their members.
Assuming that representatives always implement policies which do not harm any of their voters is a leap of logic as well.
This leads me to believe that it isn't possible for democracies (or any kind of government for that matter) not to cause harm, but that it is however the best option to try and minimize it.