Will the current system of government by elected representatives ever be replaced by anything else?

there are two potential drives for change which I can think of:

(i) Technology.

(ii) Fall in voter turnout to the point when the idea that the elected government can be said to represent the views of the people appears ridiculous.

there may be many more reasons for a change from the current system (or set of systems, because of course there are many variants on the theme, UK style first-past-the-post, all the different kinds of proportional representation etc).

I've been thinking about reason (i) a lot lately, with regard to the potential increased use of referenda using an electronic system putting a lot more power in the hands of the people. the main objection to this would be that it wouldn't really put power in the hands of the ppl becuase:

people simply wouldn't have time to vote on all the important decisions that needed to be made

the real power would be in the hands of whoever phrased the questions

now I don't know whether these problems will always be insurmountable and so will render any change along thse lines impractical for evermore or not...what do you think?

In Australia voting is compulsory so (ii) won't happen there at least.

I don't think referendums, electronic or otherwise, are much of an answer to anything. I'm not sure that people really want to participate in government, what they want is a competent government whose broad ideological thrust reflects their own. Some government is the sexy stuff like deciding to invade Iraq or privatising great swathes of industry, most of it is administrative process of mind-boggling complexity that the vast majority of people are neither interested or competent in dealing with. If you're buying a computer or car, what you want is something that broadly converges with your needs - you don't want to have a say in how much of the company's budget goes into design and how much into R&D.

...most of it is administrative process of mind-boggling complexity that the vast majority of people are neither interested or competent in dealing with...

Well, that's what the argument's over, isn't it. Whether one should contract out so much of one's life to the bureaucracy, the interests of which are not easily defined - that's usually assumed to be a right-wing thing to say, but it's a massive part of pre-20th century socialism too.
It's true, though, that most government is 'invisible', has little to do with dimwits like John Reid and much more to do with the civil service lifers who have to potty train him.

I've recently been thinking a great deal about this, about how the notion of "true democracy" with each person as an equal participant & voice in the governing of themselves/each other is becoming almost actually physically possible thanks to current technology. I often think that with the understanding that they/we them/ourselves are "in charge", one of three things might happen: A) certain individuals/groups who's intentions were less-than-wholesome might be able to take advantage of this, B) certain individuals/groups who were more educated in-regards-to the issue at hand or had more interest in said issue would be the ones who controlled the outcome, or C) "average" people might become more interested in and motivated towards self-governing.

I don't really think we vote for representatives anymore, just parties and policies in a fairly roundabout way.

Maybe the future lies in everyone who can be bothered voting directly on policies proposed by political wonks.

I'd like to make politicians more representative and more locally accountable, ensuring that every person has a voice through a representative who more or less represents their views. See my notes on my proportional power theory elsewhere.

surely b) is the one that isn't going to happen. IE it's the one that's (notionally) already happening (well the educated (or rather informed) part).

c) isn't going to happen. People don't want democracy.

I think voting should be compulsary. if people don't want to vote then they can tick a box that says 'not voting'.

Hopefully soon we can go back to just seeing the future in elephant droppings and make all policy decisions accordingly, elections are very annoying

I will give this my best shot, if you promise to forgive me for being a pessimistic and embittered old fart.

Representative 'democracy' should be seen clearly for what it is: a limited mitigation of oligarchic rule. There are only a few directions that "the current system of government by elected representatives" can take that would alter its fundamantally oligarchic constitution.

Will it ever be replaced? Yes. Everything changes.

Unfortunately, moving further in the direction of true democracy is not a likely or even a very desirable alternative. I take "true democracy" to mean a state where citizens directly make the laws and set government policy. The problem here is that true democracy, however fine it is for the rank and file citizenry, is a local phenomenon that doesn't scale well.

The reason it doesn't scale well has nothing to do with the logistics of having millions of people voting on every proposed change of law. That could be done. The real reason is that information doesn't scale well. This can already be seen in elections for representives where, as local constituencies grow ever larger, the information content of elections grows predictably and ever more ruthlessly reductive.

What is the likelihood that, instead of scaling democracy up to the huge size of current nations, nations instead scale down to a small size where democracy becomes more viable? Not bloody likely. Big nations with big economies wield big power. They are the predators at the top of the food chain. They would only evolve into smaller, more nimble, more democratic parcels if big size no longer equated with big power. It is damned hard to imagine how that would happen, unless there is an intervening period of dissolution and anarchy. In which case, that is what would replace the current system.

The other direction that could replace the current modified oligarchic rule is monarchy. That's where I would put my money.

No doubt, just as Augustus kept the forms of republican rule in Rome, any monarchy that emerged from a current western-style representative government would present itself as essentially no different than what we have today. You'd still get to vote for a representative, but the representative's power to create policy would be nil. As usual, the justification would be the increased efficiency of dictatorial rule, either to meet an external threat or to achieve highly-prized national ambitions.

Not only that, but from the perspective of we, the rabble, this change would be almost imperceptible, in that our own personal political power would erode so slightly it would be easy to miss. Daily life would appear almost entirely unchanged. It's the oligarchs who would howl and cast imprecations and generally feel aggrieved at the cooption of their power.

The USA happens to be far better situated for this switch to monarchy than any of the EU countries, in that our constitution is modeled more self-consciously on that of the Roman republic than the parlimentary model favoured in Europe. Look for it here first. Our system lends itself to a quick conversion to dictatorship and we're already partway down that road - purely in the interests of national defense, of course!