The political system commonly referred to colloquially as "democracy" is a very flawed, pliable, and prone to exploitation by elite special interests. Despite this, it seems to be the only system of governance in the modern era that has successfully integrated the social consent of the people with the governing authorities. The issue, however, is that the social consent of the people is essentially controlled by exclusive elite segments of society, such as the media and monetary donors. This can be witnessed without effort in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States.
The US government has become adept at manipulating public opinion to sponsor whichever policies it chooses to pursue. As a result, political sovereignty is no longer held by the people, it is held by the governing elite. This system essentially results in a quasi-oligarchy with most of the people being oblivious to who truly rules them, with a minority understanding who truly rules them (in the case of the United States, it is a select group of individuals who operate banking cartels and other corporate transnational giants).
Thus, social consent is undercut and the people are no longer granting consent to be governed: the governing authority grants itself to govern endlessly. As a natural result, the governing authority pursues its own interests indefinitely (until the system crashes).
This is self-evident for anyone who understands how the federal reserve works, for anyone who understands that over 97% of the gains in GDP over the past 20 years have gone to the top 1% of individuals in the economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.
This begs the question -- what's a better alternative?
It's simple, actually: a politburo system with a certain ideology as the governing rationale. This ideology does not necessarily have to be democratically accepted, but it should incorporate social consent in one way or another (usually through religious means or something analogous).
This seals the governing authority off to special interests that exploit governance in pursuit of greed. That is the central problem with democracy.
Great historical example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate