I think this is an excellent question to ask. It does seem fairly surprising that democracy works as well as it does. Bryan Caplan has a number of posts on this issue.
He seems to think that part of the answer is that politicians often use their political slack to make reasonable decisions. Politicians might not have that great of incentives or be that intelligent, but voters have really terrible incentives to have good opinions on most issues, so political slack can be a good thing.
I think this is an excellent question to ask. It does seem fairly surprising that democracy works as well as it does. Bryan Caplan has a number of posts on this issue.
He seems to think that part of the answer is that politicians often use their political slack to make reasonable decisions. Politicians might not have that great of incentives or be that intelligent, but voters have really terrible incentives to have good opinions on most issues, so political slack can be a good thing.