To rule or not to rule... that is the question

This morning I was taking a break from studying for my risk management exam while going over today's Financial Times (yeah I know... some break!). And of course, about a third of the headlines were in relation to the Italian election results. But there was one article that I found particularly interesting in the sense that it was talking about how their political system changed since 1945 and how there are so many layers of government right now that it is almost impossible to take swift action to get the country out of the crisis. And it's true that we see this more and more in various countries whether it's the US, Canada, Romania or others (well I think.... I don't follow governments in other countries much). There are so many political actors that it is almost impossible to reach a consensus. Even in the US where they only have 2 parties, they can't seem to agree unless they have a knife to the throat. So is the solution to simplify the process? To strip down the layers and concentrate the decision-making power? We would have less trouble for sure! But coming back to Italy, the main reason they created this system was to prevent extremists like the fascists from taking over. It's a tradeoff like everywhere else: either efficiency or security, either high return or low risk. Somehow you still wonder if there isn't some magical middle ground that somehow we never considered. Beneath the edges of a cube, there's a sphere waiting to be revealed and a wheel with it.