Populist anger is 'a gift wrapped in barbed wire' (2016)

This is much more representative; if you look at a country's population and at their politicians you will see large differences in age, education, wealth etc. This can be used to overcome that by selecting, as much as possible, a random representative group of people, much as you would in a scientific study. It also avoids party agendas and things like that.

It is not my impression that debate in most representative democracies are led by academics and experts. Many high-level decisions are not one of expertise in the first place; take the whole business with the anti-smoking bill in the UK: of course you can and should consult experts on the effects of it all, but in the end the decision is not really a matter of expertise.