The large blocks need to be able to move forward in legislation but the more uglier and tumultuous the backroom dealing are (within legal bounds) the healthier the democracy is.
Basically, academic tenure is opposite from democracy.
Most of the electorate doesn't really understand it, constantly clamoring for one or the other to be the only guiding principle, but you need both - and one has to find a way even when they appear completely irreducible. Democracy is beautiful in a very messy way, a bit like nature.
Living easier, richer, safer lives than 99.99% of all humans who have ever existed?
Different countries are very different.
You probably can name "the usual grifters" in your domicile but don't expect the same patterns to be transferrable to different regions.
Sometimes pathologies are portable like the the authoritarian state capture toolkit but even there _who are you doing it with_ can be quite different even though _how you are doing it_ may seem familiar.
Also by any metric the general unspecific list of countries "east and west" has lots of variance in life expectancy, happiness, poverty, literacy etc.
So I can only read this as pointless general venting or faux cynicism.
From what I observed of my time in academia, I don't see any reason for academics to do any better than other groups. Like everywhere, the starry-eyed, altruistic ones always lose the fight against the political sharks.