One thing political scientists, and a lot of other people, don’t seem to understand is that representative government is not the best possible system of government because the majority of the voting public is well-informed, altruistic, or wise. The will of the people can be for really stupid and/or immoral things. The reason we need representative government is because it is a self-correcting system. People regret voting for Bush twice but they are not going to vote for a Republican this time around in light of the results they got from Bush.
Or maybe they will. But eventually they will correct for their own errors. And you don’t get that in a dictatorship or a monarchy. If you want efficiency, authoritarian governments can provide it for a time. But tyranny is a bad form of government because it does not allow for an orderly change of course.
Yes, we can improve on the performance of our government by improving on the overall intelligence and education of the electorate. But the system works better than any other in spite of the innate weaknesses and ignorance of the general public.