David Hume wrote in his famous Essays that democracy cannot be "Representative" because all societies are "Governed by the few." Sociologist Robert Michels then defined, in his ground-breaking work on political parties, what he called the "Iron law of oligarchy," methodically showing that all mature organizations, without exception, become oligarchic.
As Robert Michels noted, it was only when the practical impossibilities of direct democracy on a large scale became evident, that the concept of political representation gained legitimacy.
Tocqueville warned in Democracy in America that one of the potential threats to democracy is that people can become so absorbed by the pursuit of economic opportunities that they lose interest in politics.
The Inherent Instability of All Political Systems Though the illusion of democracy is slowly fading in the West, it is not so much because of a realization of the truths presented above.
Democracy, in particular, is subject to constant swings of political tensions due to its inherent lack of fairness: the losing side of an election is not represented.
As Gustave de Molinari wrote, democracy "Insist[s] that the decisions of the majority must become law, and that the minority is obliged to submit to it, even if it is contrary to its most deeply rooted convictions and injures its most precious interests." Voting phenomena like Duverger's Law and Arrow's paradox tend to soften Molinari's stark description but, by distorting election results, they hardly make them more representative or more fair.
As Tocqueville said, "I dearly love liberty and respect for rights, but not democracy." Considering the misconceptions about political representation that have been presented here, it is high time to fully smash the illusion of democracy in the West and substitute freedom for democracy as the highest political goal to attain and to protect.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/smashing-western-illusion-democracy
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