Forgive me for repeating myself:
Democracy, as a practical matter, is basically an exercise in passing the buck, in avoiding responsibility. The technical term for this is a "beard".
Everyone in power claims to answer to and derive their authority from someone else, going ultimately back to "the people" who themselves do not directly exercise power, and who would find it difficult to exercise as a collective action problem, even if they had the formal authority to do so.
What this means is that real power is often in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, who typically don't even want to stand for election because they don't want the voters to know what their programs are, much less to exercise any oversight. Robert Moses is the classic example here.
Even that minimal level of scrutiny is too much for some, and real power is often exercised by people not formally part of any government structure. Corporate lobbyists or Robert Kagan come to mind .
Taking into account how wildly unpopular most western politicians and their policies are with their respective publics, "democracy" as it is practiced is basically a cover for rulers to do what they want.
After all, your elected representatives approved this. If you don't like it, you can vote for a different carefully vetted corporate imperialist muppet, so until then, shut up and fall in line!
