On corruption ...since we're WAY off topic anyway 
Corruption happens everywhere. If anyone tells me that their country is completely free of all corruption, they're either extremely naive, brainwashed by patriotism or somehow benefit from the coverup of corruption themselves.
What matters is how corruption's dealt with and what the attitudes of the general public are to it and whether the infrastructure is in place to deal with it legally.
In a healthy, open democracy with good levels of transparency and strong levels of social cohesion any corruption will tend to be exposed and dealt with quite effectively. So, if anything sometimes you'll find people from parts of Northern Europe and Canada etc will tend to be very aware of any corruption that's going on in their countries as it will be a matter of public debate.
The issue that worries me is when you see corruption becoming so endemic that it becomes acceptable or where the state itself becomes part of that corruption.
If you're talking about the USA and EU countries, take a look at the financial services sector! Due to very effective lobbying (which may not necessarily have been paying people off, but just spinning thing the right way / wielding economic cloud) the banks managed to get a situation where they'd 'light touch' regulation and basically walked us into near economic armageddon in 2008!
The banks then convinced the governments that they were so fundamentally important to the economic system that they could not be allowed to fail and 'We the People" in various otherwise very democratic countries had our representatives backed into a corned and billions upon billions of public money poured into those banks.
Here in Ireland for example, the fall out of that and the collapse of a property bubble was that the Government that was in power at that time and that made that decision collapsed as MPs withdrew support and it ended up facing the wrath of the public in a general election. FF, a party that had dominated Irish politics for decades (on the same scale as the Democrats or the Republicans in the US) lost all but 20 seats. Basically they were absolutely decimated and ended up in 4th position. Their collation partners the Green Party no longer have any seats at all.
There was a lot of anger, and a lot of annoyance but it didn't end up in riots in the street. The system worked and decision makers lost their seats and were replaced with alternatives.
We've just spent the last four years really digging ourselves out of that mess and the economy is finally starting to turn around in a noticeable way and is starting to show signs of rapidly falling unemployment and major export growth again. Huge amounts of money were made available for retraining (including vocational stuff and going back to university and do masters etc to change career direction entirely). Loads of emphasis has been put into supporting new businesses etc etc.
I think what separates countries with good and bad governance is always down to transparency, accountability (to the electorate) and the fact that the electorate engages and understands problems and can deal with them.
In general here though most people would have very strong levels of confidence in the police (who are unarmed btw) and those kinds of structures. There's a lot of cynicism about politicians at the moment which is probably not entirely justified but is understandable given what we've just been through. However, I think all in all our system general works pretty well.
Absolutely no country gets a perfect score on corruption though.
The most important thing in any country is to QUESTION EVERYTHING.
To paraphrase a famous quote often erroneously attributed to several famous people including Thomas Jefferson:
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!"
In countries with no history of democracy or with flawed democracies, that's obviously a *LOT* more difficult. However, for those of us lucky enough to be living in liberal democracies, it is unbelievable that a significant % of people just opt not to engage and don't bother voting and then moan about the system.
I nearly stopped speaking to a friend of mine over this a few months ago. We had a referendum on whether or not to keep the Senate or just have a one house (unicameral) system like some Nordic countries and New Zealand.
This involved voting to change the constitution (we do this every now and then).
This guy was like "what's that got to do with me? I don't care. It's was raining so I didn't bother!" (yet he spends his life complaining about everything!).
How many people in the world get an opportunity to actually vote on changes to the constitution?!?
How many people every in human history have had that power?
Yet, we have it and here's that guy throwing it away coz he couldn't be bothered...
Infuriating![this post was last edited: 12/19/2013-07:35]
