I don't think there has ever been a point in human history in which politics has been constructed to satisfy a purely meritocratic outcome. Rather, politics has always been about satisfying core ethical or personal aspirations. We can see this as far back as Plato, and you would be hard pressed, I think, to find a major political theorist which advocates for political systems based upon their effectiveness in governance alone. To borrow terminology from Weber, Politics is about Substantive Rationality rather than Formal Rationality. That is to say, it is rational in achieving non-rational ends (ethical, religious, traditional values) rather than being an end in itself. This is why I think criticising Democracy (or any political system) on the grounds that it is Formally inefficient doesn't have much purchase, as most ideologies have never been argued for on these grounds. The universal franchise is substantively rational in achieving the value of equality even if it is formally irrational in terms of pure utility. And you could apply this to a whole host of inefficiencies in society. For example, you could make the argument that many of the resources allocated to education are wasted on children who show no academic potential and don’t need much of an education to be carpenters or brick-layers, and as such these resources should instead be used on those best and brightest students. This may be true on the basis of pure utility, but it violates the liberal values of equality, meliorism, and individual liberty. It would be formally rational, but substantively irrational. That is why we have universal education rather than selective education, even if selective education would be more efficient and achieve better results.

I also don’t think the simply having educated people voting would solve anything; I tend to agree with Castells when he says “The more citizens are educated, the more they are capable of elaborating interpretations of available information in support of pre-determined political preferences. This is because a higher level of knowledge provides people with more intellectual resources for self-rationalisation in support of their emotionally induced misperceptions.” That is to say, there is no guarantee that a higher level of education or knowledge will lead to some harmonised objectively correct viewpoint. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that very knowledgeable and intelligent people often heatedly disagree on the subject they are both experts in. Any political issue is likely to have many correct available answers, being more or less correct depending on which values to hold and which you seek to achieve. Plato’s republic to us seems like a tyranny, to him it seemed perfectly Just. I don't think you could say either position is objectively more correct than the other. Rather, we should judge political decisions and systems on their capacity to fulfil their ethical considerations, and argue about which ethical goals we should seek to realise. Efficiency could be one of them.

I've been wondering recently as to whether the differences in European protests and those found in America is a product of city layouts. Many of the classic crowd psychologists list foremost proximity as a necessary factor to induce the effect of a psychological crowd (characterised by its extreme swings in emotional sentiment, a formation of a sort of collective mind or opinion, as well as a great tendency for violent action). Canetti posits that density, movement, and constant growth are necessary for a crowd prevent itself from dissipating and merely forming a group of people occupying the same space, and that curiosity tends to be a great magnetic force which attracts bystanders to join a crowd. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that all of the great popular revolutions of Europe occurred during or after the Industrial Revolution—the great swelling of cities with the working poor due to the enclosure of the commons and the rise of wage labour in the factories created conditions amenable to the formation of crowds.

Now, looking at the layout of cities (generally) in the two areas we find that, due to historical circumstances, there is a far larger urban population in European cities and a far higher sub-urban population in American cities. This was caused by the building of New World cities around the time of the automobile rather than foot traffic; resulting in wider streets which primarily accommodate cars, longer distances between key areas of the city, longer distances between where the majority of people live and the city centre, and a far more “open” environment connected by highways. European cites on the other hand tend to have narrower streets, boulevards connecting major areas, a more “enclosed” feeling due to more continuous but lower buildings flanking streets than the grid-like plotting of skyscrapers.

With such a large urban population confined in narrower spaces, the conditions seem perfect for the formation of crowds—there is a less of a distance for people to join the commotions, it is more visible to those living in the apartments of the urban centres allowing it to attract more bystanders, the long streets allow continuous compact movements throughout the city. Rather than streaming in from the suburban neighbourhoods in cars or buses as you see in America, public transports and merely walking are options. America seems hamstrung by its large, open “demonstration grounds” which prevent both a high density of people and the ability of more people joining organically. It is simply harder to set up a large protest in American cities, and far more difficult to sustain it, which may help explain why European Protests have longer legs and are more frequent. It may also explain why they tend to be more, uh, excitable (though that may also have to do with the difference in policing practices).

That is not to say that this is the primary reason, or even too major a reason, but it may well be a contributing factor.