Constitutions, prerequisites to Democracy? (contribution post)

We discussed in class non-Democratic countries, things about their nature, distinguishing them from Democratic counter-parts. Interestingly we got onto to the topic of 'constitutions' - we tried to guess what a country was based on what a document on liberties of the country says. This was interesting not because they all seemed to share a few points, but the map we were given after that seemed to show nowadays, nearly every country has a written constitution or bills/laws enacting a constitution-esque sentiment, especially in the case of New Zealand where we have the 1986 Constitution Act, but no real 'written, formal' constitution anywhere. In fact when shown maps whether constitutions mention freedom of speech, freedom of protest, freedom to gather, protection of people, expressly mentioned gender equality... New Zealand didn't have any of these, yet according to the UN development report, which takes into account personal freedoms, gender equality, human development and economic development (http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-2014) New Zealand ranked #7 in the world for all of these things.

After that I was wondering what does a constitution even mean to a country? Does it guarantee anything at all? Why do some countries create a fetishism for their constitution? Does it make a country more democratic?

Short answer I've found from reading (probably not in depth) is a big, fat, no. Essentially all countries (apart from a few, even non-democratic) ones have a constitution, all promising essentially the same thing, with some exception like Saudi-Arabia's which declares the Qur'an to be their constitution. It doesn't seem to be a necessity for governments in the world to place a constitution (to act as a supreme rule) on people when they could simply create a set of laws. This way, everything can be changed by government at a latter stage if need be. I found a man who disagreed, Sunstein, even in his works says that constitutions are like governments of their own and that they are "[prerequisites] to a functioning society". He says that Democracy isn't only about people getting a say, getting to vote and a majority rule system to be in place. To him constitutions are a vital part of a democracy because they provide a fall-back to the public and provide checks and balances to the government. (http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/147.pdf)

Which led me to another point we discussed in class that a simpler way to see democracies is a regime where "parties lose elections". Which is a simple analysis, being that it didn't take into account how it came into power, but we assume it was elected. I'm not one for dictatorships, but what if the party was supported by people, got into power and clung to it, but people still loved it and the party was doing great things? I started devising my own way to define 'democracy', where it's a default political affiliation that governments can use to their advantage, it's one where the literal meaning has all but evaporated. One where the order of how it was previously recognised is disintegrated. One where what may have been an idea to include the masses, minds, groups, has been eviscerated. It's pretty unfashionable in the 21st century for a country to not identify or specifically state it is democratic, saying you're not is kinda like having an iphone 4 when the iphone 6s is out (figuratively speaking in today's terms, of course) democracies now tend to heavily favour a constitution, convincing me personally that a constitution was the life-blood of a country. This all brings me back to a final question, what is a democracy?