according to a site called democracymatrix there are 35 countries more democratic than the us
the countries
- Denmark
- Norway
- Finland
- Sweden
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Belgium
- Costa Rica
- Spain
- Luxembourg
- Australia
- Estonia
- Iceland
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
- Austria
- France
- South Korea
- Lithuania
- Italy
- Portugal
- Canada
- Japan
- Taiwan
- Uruguay
- Cyprus
- Chile
- Slovakia
- Greece
- Czech Republic
- Latvia
- Barbados
- Israel
Speaking for NZ, while we do have things like:
Cheap or free healthcare
Roads in good condition
Low corruption/Limited power
Excellent conservation
Great public services
High level of safety
Very strong employment laws
Very low exploitation
Very open press
Free speech
Almost nearly adequate climate policies
We are still stuck with a lot of people who have the red vs blue mindset. People often vote for the party that is most likely to stop the party they don’t want getting in to power.
We have MMP here, which is of course the best system, we have political parties across the spectrum so that the largest amount of people have representation. But goddam it’s always the same 2 in majority power.
There’s delay in progressive change, eg decriminalizing weed, providing better health services.
When the wrong party is in (team blue) they focus on the wrong things ie building even more roads instead of improving public transport etc.
When the less wrong party is in (team red) they focus on appearing to do things that we care about but do a bad job.
It’s difficult to nail down general specifics but I think you get the idea.