Quote Originally Posted by Maciamo
I was thinking about France, Belgium or Germany. In the last French presidential elections, there were about 20 candidates, and the highest %age of vote (Chirac) was only about 20% because of the multitude of parties. In Belgium, there are 10 major parties (5 by linguistic groups). After a corruption scandal involving the socialist party was revealed, it immediately lost 10% of the votes. When the mad cow disease and dioxixe chicken cases appeared, the public voted massively for the Green Party, which more than doubled its seats (reaching 20% in the French speaking area). That is a clear refelction of democracy, and politicians actually did go in the same direction as they promised.
France and Belgium are both interesting cases. Belgium has a right-wing party called the Vlaams Blok that has huge support. It has practically been banned (partially in the Flemish area, and totally in the Francophone area), because of its right-wing views. That's not very democratic. France's general election in which Chirac won was an interesting case of the people settling for what they don't want (Chirac) in order to avoid getting what they even more definitely don't want (le Pen). That's something that happens often in a representational democracy. France is also routinely held to ransome by its farmers, which is something that happens in Japanese politics, too. So, I accept that these countries do let the electorate influence politics up to a point, but still say that even these have pretty big questions hanging around how democratic they really are.

The UK's politics is more elitist (all PM's graduated from Oxbridge of public schools), and parties reflect the class system (which I think is a good thing). BUt politicians are usually very able, at the exact opposite of Japan, and maybe more similar to the elite bureaucrats of Japan, making the right decisions for the country, which the less informed or less well-educated public cannot always understand.

Italy's political system is a basket case, and the high corruption compares very well indeed to the situation in Japan.
Well, not all PMs came from the background you say. John Major is a recent exception, and most French top politicians seem to be Sorbonne graduates. I agree that basically, UK politicians (at the national level) are pretty competent and honourable by global standards. They have to jump through several meritocratic hoops before they get to the top, and it would be impossible for someone as ignorant and inarticulate as Bush to get to the top in British politics. On the other hand, you want to see our local politics, or even the Scottish Parliament. An utter disgrace. I also agree that Italy is a basket case, politically. Funny thing is, nobody in the country seems to care. I think, if anything, Japan is somewhat better than Italy, though its problems are similar in form.