It's funny that you see the problem with AfD and RfA as being their "globalness". With RfA at least, I see the reverse: the fact that a subcommunity ("regular RfA participants") has formed, with its own norms, culture, convetions and so forth. If you randomly selected any Wikipedian, pointed them at the policy for selecting admins, and asked them to vote on a given candidate, you would get a result very different to what happens at RfA.
I've heard similar stories about AfD - that there is a small group that frequently votes, occasionally interrupted by vote stacking or interest from outside parties.
Perhaps the real problem is that "locus of control" should not be self-selecting. I don't want to propose an elected committee to do RfA's or AfD's. But do you agree that a) there exists a "locus of control" already, and that b) it is self-selecting?
I think that you are right but missing the real problem. There will always be a "locus of control" and unless you want to impose elections for those who should vote on AfD, that group will always be self-selecting. I think that the real problem is that the group which controls which Star Trek articles (for example) that should be included and deleted from Wikipedia is a different group than those who are interested in Star Trek. A group of people on Wikipedia is interested in writing and improving Star Trek articles, another group is interested in deleting Star Trek articles. That arrangement obviously causes friction. It would be much better if it could be arranged so that those people who write Star Trek articles also are in charge when it comes to deleting Star Trek articles.
-- mvh Björn