Notion: The more a political system is understood as a political system, the greater the attenuation between the intentions of the people and the policies of the government. As each aspect of the process is increasingly understood, the testimony of the people, whether the direct democracy of the base level, or the votes of republican assemblies, becomes a discrete and objective phenomenon, and this operates in a zero-sum manner with its sanctity, which is to say the degree to which its own purpose constitutes the understanding and use of these testimonial acts.
Take, for example, a Tom-Sawyer speech by a major American politician in Europe. Since the speaker is speaking from first principles within a very complex system of political systems, the effects can be anomalous with respect to the principles of the speech. The currency of first principles, applied at each discrete level of politics, can imbalance things to the degree that these mechanisms have already been defined and understood. Contrastingly, within a naive system, say a nation still effectively governed by family tribes and with only a basic governance, the currency of first principles can be applied with equal (a scientist would say nominal) effect with respect to every aspect of the mechanism.
As the recent political discourse in the US demonstrates, when the people think they've severally discovered "what's really going on," in these mechanisms, the music becomes discordant.