The book It's Even Worse Than It Looks is a great resource for understanding this phenomenon in the United States. The authors are longtime congressional staffe

The book It's Even Worse Than It Looks is a great resource for understanding this phenomenon in the United States. The authors are longtime congressional staffers who are horrified at the institution's decline. They argue that the US Congress really isn't working well, degrading the performance of the entire US government, and the primary cause of this dysfunction is a deliberate campaign by the Republican party, starting with Newt Gingrich in the mid 1990s. I remember learning about the Contract With America is school, but I had no idea it was so insidious. The GOP intentionally broke congress to get people angry about crappy government, under the theory that they, as the party of small government, they would make relative gains. This has now baked for 20 years, and has been pretty effective. This is why you see Republicans stonewalling things they should logically support, like nominees they explicitly praise as qualified, Obamacare's extensive market mechanics, etc. It's also why Congress can't pass laws even when thr majority of the population supports them, and real crises like the Debt Ceiling debacle. Institutions are critically important. We have to fix this before we can fix anything else.