Corruption
In a modern state, with efficient tax collection, the tax money serves as incentive for corruption, which the representatives fail to resist. This makes corruption as characteristic of Government by Representatives as the ballot box.

Populism and Short-Term Planning
Due to the desire for re-election, projects that demonstrate short-term results are preferred over long-term projects. Should the project demonstrate results after four and a half years, someone other than the project’s initiator might win the credit; should the project demonstrate results too soon, it will not be remembered by the time of the next elections. As a result, big, important projects, which require vision and patience, never get started – while short term projects, such as road-mending, are delayed until just before the elections.

Lack of Personal Accountability
Representatives who have made erroneous decisions, or were administratively responsible for a mistake by an organ of the state, are not required to take personal responsibility. For example, during the first Gulf War the public was given faulty gas-masks. Not a single figure, from the military to the minister of defense was called to task. In the question personal accountability, the system trusts to office-holders’ sense of shame. Given the society we live in, this is hardly a reliable method.

Lack of Personal Skills
Representatives are not required to demonstrate any skills, other than the ability to get elected. Furthermore, representatives are often assigned jobs which are not in their field of expertise, due to political horse-trading or worse. These appointments are often intended to cause difficulties to these same representatives, so as to undermine their future chances in the political struggle.

Four Year Dictatorship
The public has no avenue to influence their representatives’ decision making, or to replace them while in office. Even when a representative has lost public confidence, his or her recall will fall to the other members of the Knesset, who will then have to unite and bring about a general election. All this is entirely out of the hands of the public.

Demonstrations and Lawmaking Struggles
In a democratic form of government, the public’s right to demonstrate in order to sway public opinion is a given. However, even when public opinion overwhelmingly supports a notion, it sometimes takes a demonstration in order to convince the Knesset. It seems ridiculous that a demonstration is needed in order to convince 120 people of something that is clear to everybody. A poll could suffice.

Admission of Mistakes
Making the right decision requires the ability to tell truth from lie, salient facts from side issues, and particularly the ability to look at the past honestly and admit your own mistakes. Government by Representatives encourages the representatives to assume a mystique of infallibility, as any politician who behaves otherwise is bound to find himself or herself in an inferior position viz-a-viz his or her competitors. As politicians who made it to the top are those politicians who have used any possible foothold during the long climb, it follows that most politicians in the top echelons of government will deny having made mistakes in the past. This blanket denial of errors is so obvious, that it may be assumed that some of these politicians deny such errors even to themselves, thus impairing their decision making process. A further outcome is that even when a politician admits to himself or herself that an error was indeed made, there can be no hope of remedy, as any action which goes against his or her past doings will be deemed an admission of failure, will expose his or her inability to admit mistakes in public, and his or her dishonesty about past mistakes, thus endangering the politician’s position.

Coalition Imperatives
Allocation of state funds is disproportionate to the size of the various parties. Small parties, attempting to sell their way into the coalition, will be bought by the coalition-makers at high price, relative to their size. These coalition imperatives prevent a wide-ranging view of the problems in the country and in the budget, and prevent long-term solutions. From that moment on, part of the state budget is earmarked for the coalition give-and-take, even before any policy decisions have been made.

Government Office Holders
In a Government by Representatives, the public has no say in deciding what candidate will serve at which post – except the post of prime minister. All other posts are determined in the process coalition-making, through horse-trading. A fine example is Amir Peretz, who ran on a social platform but accepted the post of minister of defense.

Undue Influence by Big-Money
In order to get elected, a candidate requires a lot of money. Most politicians in Israel are not very rich, and are therefore in constant search of money. This makes candidates ideal targets to people with vested interests, who are looking for sympathetic legislation, government contracts or simply ties to the government, to be traded upon later on.

Oligarchy Disguised as Democracy
The coalition/opposition system, much like the prosecution/defense system, is based on the assumption that decisions beneficial to the public will be produced by the conflict between the various parties, where each side fights the others to the bitter end. In fact, most relevant parties are on good terms, and often agree on deals between them, while their public mission is forgotten.

Easy to Bribe Representatives
In an industrialized society, such as ours, there are many people and organs with the means to bribe government officials. That same representative will think twice before ruling out accepting the bribe. Should he or she refuse, that same person or organ could use those same funds against the representative.

Over-Representation of Vested Interests
People of means and interests could, by exploiting the lobby system, influence the decision-making process disproportionately to their share of the population, and sometimes against the public interest. The public does not have the means those people have to vie for the representative’s heart.

Lies as Part of the System
Politicians make promises before elections, promises which they know they will not keep. The public, being optimistic by nature, believes these lies, hoping this time they will prove to be true. The position of a politician who does not lie is inferior to that of a rival politician who promises Heaven Upon Earth. This causes even honest politicians to become liars during elections time. Once such a politician has overcome his or her “trial by fire”, they are qualified to continue work as a public representative who has proved his or her ability to successfully lie to the public. He or she will now do it again and again.

The Shield of Urgent Problems
Because the public is only given the vote once every four years, it will naturally vote according to the most urgent issue at that time. Other issues, regardless how important they may be, are sidelined. Even after the elections, these issues will be left unattended with the excuse that the REALLY urgent issues must take precedence. The public will tend to forgive corruption scandals, unjust decision etc., as long as the representative will claim they were done in favor of the dominant issue of the day. A clear example is the security situation in Israel. It is very difficult to work on other issues, such as society, ecology and the economy, as long as the security issue takes precedence.

The System Corrupts
Even if the candidate is righteous of disposition and even if his or her intentions are pure, upon taking office he or she will have to compromise and make deals with colleagues in and out of politics, which will necessarily lead to corruption.

Lack of Vision
It is a malady of Government by Representatives, that the checks and balances imposed on decision makers, in order to prevent them making catastrophic long-term decisions, also act as impediments to positive, far-reaching vision – even when that vision is desirable to many people of the public. In other words, the attempt to avoid disasters has become a way of avoiding boons.

The Party System
In addition to mirroring the maladies of the leadership, the party system creates a barrier between the public and high politics, and prevents the public from taking part in it. Parties are an oligarchical tool for sifting elements the oligarchy finds undesirable from participating in politics, particularly people who are too honest or idealistic.
The system of representatives creates an atmosphere where the representative will refrain from changes or projects that are deemed too big, as such changes and projects may unsettle the party status-quo. The party, being an organ made up of many members with interests in government, is a risk-avoiding organ. Even if the public was so lucky as to find a party leader willing to take risks, that leader will be reined-in by his or her own party, which may actively fight the leader and possibly even denounce him or her. An example is Ehud Barak, who attempted to make far-reaching political moves without consulting his close associates, and was denounced and effectively removed from politics.