The question isn't whether or not it works. It most certainly does work, as effectively now as 200 and 2,000 years ago.
The question is rather, for whom does it work. It works for an oligarchy. And this was as true 200 and 2,000 years ago as it is today.
Notice some of the quotes of Alexander Fraser Tytler here. He wrote critically about the kind of democratic republican ideals that were shaping the US in his own day, and hearkened back to the weaknesses demonstrated by experiments with such systems in antiquity, and his observations read like they could have been written about our own generation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler,_Lord_Woodhouselee#Quotations_on_democracy