Nothing is ever truly perfect and intelligent, productive criticism can be directed at anything created and run by human but generally speaking, do you believe your national government does a good job meeting the current and future economic, social and environmental needs of you and your fellow citizens?
How many of you would say “yes” to that question?
Where among the G20 nations would I tend to find the largest rates of positive responses?
I use the G20 list as a useful benchmark but if you want to expand out to other nations that still have a free and active press that that’s good too.
Two completely different questions. The question in the text of the OP does not necessarily reflect contentment. The highest happiness rates in developed countries are in those with a Roman Catholic majority. Furthermore, it would be unrealistic to expect the general public to fully comprehend the thrust of the complex question, and if people misconstrue it to be asking if they are personally contented or not, you will get misleading and non-relevant answers.
Even after reading the question twice, I doubt if very many of my neighbors would have a clear picture of what you are asking. So how many of them would answer Yes would be statistically meaningless. Answers would vary according to how they personally feel about the person posing the question to them.
Also consider the fact that in most countries, you’d be asking a question translated into their language, and owing to the foibles of translations, might trigger a very different sentiment in speakers of another language.
You might not get the response you expect from :"Ingenting er virkelig perfekt og intelligent, kan produktiv kritikk rettes mot noe opprettet og drevet av menneskelig, men generelt sett, tror du din nasjonale regjeringen gjør en god jobb møte nåværende og fremtidige økonomiske, sosiale og miljømessige behov du og din kamerat borgere?
Another problem arises in your own definitions. Suppose you get the following results:
Country A: 10% very contented, 50% fairly contented.
Country B: 20% very contented, 15% fairly contented.
Which one has the highest percentage of contented citizens?
If you ask on a straight Yes/No basis, the huge gray uncertain area will just give meaninglessly randomized answers from about half the respondents, possibly depending on the weather that day or what they had for breakfast or how well their shoes fit.
My sincere apology. It was not my intent to be confusing.
A perhaps more direct way to express my query would be to ask “Are you happy with your government?”
Granted when you ask that question, everyone is going to view it through their own filters of what’s good. It’s not possible to please everyone. People will disagree over what the government should and should not be doing. People will disagree over how something should be accomplished and how much of the national treasury should be expended in pursuit of any specific goal. There’s nothing wrong with this and the open discussion is productive and healthy. This is why I triad to limit it to nations with a protected free press.
Obviously this isn’t a very scientific question and perhaps I’m foolish for even wondering about it. I was just trying to get a basic grasp on the complex issue of what national governments tend to have high approval ratings from a majority of their citizens and what those nations may or may not have in common.
There are three main federal political parties in Canada. In the 2011 federal election The Conservative Party won a majority parliament with just under 40% of the popular vote. There are probably still about 60% of the population who don’t like The Conservative party regardless how they’re handling the country and would answer “no” to you question “Are you happy with your government?”
While I’m skeptical of the usefulness of the Gross National Happiness indicator, since I think it’s too subjective and a way for countries like Bhutan to distract from some very real problems, the indicator shows that the 4 Catholic-majority countries in the G20 are not, in fact, the happiest.
Looking only at nations in the G20:
Canada is #5
Australia is #9
U.S. is #11
U.K. is #18
Looking at the Catholic-majority nations in the G20:
Mexico is #24
Brazil is #25
Italy is #28
Argentina is #39
There have been dozens of Happiness Indicator scales published, all with widely varying results according to the methodology of the survey and the precise wording of the questions – again keeping in mind that the questions never have exactly the same connotations from one language to another.
Also, the OP’s question specified “national government”. In some countries (e.g., the USA), state governments, some of them virtual fiefdoms of the governor, are currently exercising a huge amount of discretionary power to undermine or supplant the will of the national government, and render citizens of some states abjectly lacking in the kinds of benefits that the national government has undertaken to offer. How should a respondent in such a state view the precise terms of your question?
I’m not going to look them all up to see. It’s not relevant to the topic anyway, it is only something I offered as an example of a factor by which efficiency of government is not always the primary factor in whether people are happy/contented or not. Ignore my specific claim, and concentrate on discovering proof that governmental function is the main (or only) element in contentedness of the citizenry.