The foreign conception of Germany as a paragon of effectiveness always did sound weird to me. The whole political system is set up to require broad consensus to

The foreign conception of Germany as a paragon of effectiveness always did sound weird to me. The whole political system is set up to require broad consensus to move anything forward. That makes it really difficult to get any meaningful change out of that political system, unless there is a real, tangible pain that is felt throughout most of society. On the other hand, it should be noted that this approach has important positive effects.