I wonder to what extent citizens worldwide have problems with their representatives, or whether they simply don’t think about them at all. Every time I see a new survey claiming how much citizens from X country detest their respected parliament, I wish there were two follow-up questions: 1) what’s the name of your representative? What are her/his priority legislative issues?

If the issue is disconnect more than dislike, then the role of many-to-many communications technologies may be less in eroding a sense of deference and more in displacing voices of authority with voices of authenticity. Obama is a notable exception, and I think that’s because he’s able to maintain his (perceived) authenticity in public. I would imagine that two other macro trends also contribute to our increased disconnect from political representatives:

1. The world is more mobile than ever before. We don’t stick around in the same representative district long enough to understand or become invested in our representatives and legislative process (this is true for me).
2. In almost all countries the population is growing, but the number of representatives stays constant. There is a very ugly website with an interesting graph of representatives per total population in the US. The notion of an elected official representing 30,000 compared to 700,000 constituents is a very different notion indeed. I think this is why, in part, we see the trend of political decentralization and a lot of hype about mayors getting things done while parliaments stall.