>However I can't think of a western country where we get so many political scandals and mismanagement as out of the US. It exceeds a country like italy several times.

But don't we have to measure this per capita? In all seriousness, the US has a lot more people than most western countries, as well as a lot more individual governments (federal, state, county and municipal). Isn't it likely we'd have more corruption?

Tamar