For a brief while, when it first went democratic, Athens had a system where a leader was chosen by ballot from eligible citizens (i.e. no slaves, women or poor people). They couldn't refuse, and had the job for a year. Once they'd done it once, they never could again.

This meant that if they were mad or bad, they couldn't do too much damage in a year and (more importantly) there was no point creating a network of patronage and corruption around them because after their year is up it would be pointless as they had nothing to offer.

Seems like as good a system of government as any other, and better than the oligarchy we have now !