In the United States, the Founding Fathers debated the idea of direct democracy at length and rejected it. Their reasons included preserving state sovereignty/local governance, and protecting rural minorities. Here's an article by George Friedman at Stratfor which serves as an introduction to the discussion: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_13051196

The only thing which can reliably be said about modern debate on how to structure a good representative government, is that the participants are rarely informed about the 500 years of debate on the subject that occurred before they were born