The administrative state in the US isn’t as trusted, powerful or competent as in other developed countries. This is partly because of the structure of government in the US, all the checks and balances making getting anything done harder, the US tendency for regulation by judicial settlement instead of legislation and the much more democratic decision making process. There are far more political appointees in the US system, and elected posts, than in other developed countries. The civil service just isn’t as powerful. All of these are self reinforcing. The US is just very different from other places.
The ignorance of international best practices is just imperial disease, a special case of not invented here. I honestly struggle to think of a technology or industry the US has lost leadership in and then recovered but it’s not like Germany is doing well in electrical vehicles. Sometimes your time is past, like the US and semiconductors.
The political and administrative sclerosis is unlikely to get better fast without the kind of pressing need that results in a new constitutional settlement. It could get better slowly I suppose. The inward looking self regard will get better when the US sees itself as an excellent country rather than assuming they’re the best at everything.
the US tendency for regulation by judicial settlement instead of legislation and the much more democratic decision making process
I'd wager that the democratic decision process in Switzerland is far more stringent and the public is far more involved.
On every level, be it a local tram line, a canton wide, or intra-cantonal rail system, or projects of national importance and great expense, like [1], the public is virtually always consulted via referendum and has to green light the project.
This is also a huge strength of the system. Because once a project is approved, the funds are secured and politicians can't pull shenanigans to pull, or divert funding.
I'd wager that a high democratic involvment into major (and expensive) projects is rather an asset, than a liability.
We have the chance to participate in the US too, now to what extend it is effective, I don’t know.
For example, even in big cities like NYC, there are public meetings about the projects, etc. Yet, I still believe that past certain point, people just stop either caring or not having the energy to follow thru the whole process.
Just a side note, it might sound pedantic but after living in Scandinavia, one thing I noticed that the expectation of “participation” during the decision making is not same even here. I bring this up because somewhat it contributes for more or less polarization and inefficient processes, I’d say.
I think Switzerland with its long history of democratic participation has developed a pretty mature population that generally makes (relatively) informed decisions. If you introduced this in the US I bet people would vote for abolishing taxes while increasing government spending on their pet issues. It would probably take a while until people have learned that this doesn't work.
For the competency and powerful the public administration, I think part of that it is really hard to compete with the private sector in the US, unless for prestige or political capital.
As trust goes, I am not sure if it is any different than most of countries in Europe except maybe Scandinavia?
For international best practices, at least in my subsection within IT, the US is the main driver for it. Most of people I talk to in terms of regulation see the US as its own jurisdiction but it is not like things there don’t make sense from a regulatory stand point, but they are just different?
I think the answer is that we just have all sorts of different systems of governance, optimized for different things.
UK underground is ancient, it's part of the fabric of culture, the UK is the birthplace of real rail, maybe they just have a centralized org to pull that off. Maybe they have a historical entente with unions. Maybe for whatever reasons there's less graft. Maybe it's just not politicized. Maybe it's just a lot easier for 'right of way' - or there are ample underground facilities. Maybe they just make things smaller (ie stations) so it's easier.
I find these situations are very enlightening, because it doesn't boil down to a scrum vs. waterfall or static vs. reactive kind of thing ... it's just 'really complicated'.
It's also very frustrating obviously and makes one very cynical of all of the dopes in charge.
I would love to vote for a super competent non-populist city administrator who said 'these are the operational reforms I am going to make', i.e. a leader who's not actually a politician.
I sort of believe that past a certain scale, a leader will have to be political to both get things done and maintain decision power. Even, if everyone agrees in one goal, which is impossible, the execution is rarely an easy division of labour.
