Sure, they are "more democratic than most of the rest of the world". And maybe it is also true that it "got more democratic over the past decades". But if you want to assess the state of something from a more universal and neutral perspective you should define a clear criteria and then assess how well these are satisfied.

If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want. You can verify this easily by looking at some poll results. As soon as there are lobbyists who influence the elected representatives, there is an inequality in the power between different interest groups. This leads to less democratic societies. In our current societies not every citizen can participate equally, therefore these are not democracies. Compare it to a mathematical definition of equality... You cannot say 0.9 is equal to 1 just because it is almost equal. In a direct democracy everyone has almost equal possibilities to participate... In a representative democracy this "almost" get's a little weaker. In a representative democracy with powerful lobbyist groups this "almost" becomes even more weak so that you cannot even call it equal anymore.

So I completely agree when people look at current democracies from an idealistic point of view and say that they are not really democracies. My personal opinion is that a much more ideal democratic society is actually possible with the advances in IT. Direct democratic participation could be possible using end-to-end auditable voting systems with cryptographic methods.