112
votes
Accepted
In most U.S. states, female genital mutilation is illegal. So why is male circumcision legal?
Clitoridectomies are not equivalent to male circumcision. Clitoridectomies are equivalent to removal of the glans (the head of the penis, which contains most of the nerve endings that produce sexual ...
- 73.4k
106
votes
Accepted
Is there any other country in the world, besides the US, that erects monuments to those who took up arms against it and lost?
There are plenty of counter-examples in the UK; commenters have mentioned Guy Fawkes, who unsuccessfully plotted to assassinate King James I and restore the Catholic monarchy - commemorated with a ...
CDJB♦
- 108k
88
votes
Accepted
Why does US tend to have rather old leaders (> 60) while more and more European countries have young ones (<40)?
I'm not terribly sure that leaving outliers aside (both Trump and Macron are such) there's that much of a difference, historically, between the major European countries and the US. The Economist ran a ...
85
votes
Why is abortion such a central issue in US politics, but not in the UK?
The following is necessarily a massive oversimplification.
Religiousness
America is, by and large, the most religious of the high-GDP countries that aren't Middle Eastern (and heavily Muslim) oil ...
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59
votes
Is there any other country in the world, besides the US, that erects monuments to those who took up arms against it and lost?
It's certainly not true in the way the mayor stated, there is a statue of George Washington in London:
It's a statue of George Washington, onetime citizen of Great Britain, father of the United ...
- 2,273
58
votes
Accepted
Has there been a non-trivial, stable, and functional anarchy?
No.
While it is hard to prove a negative, wherever two people come into conflict, either the stronger will come to dominate the weaker, or both will defer to an even stronger power, ie a government.
...
- 124k
56
votes
Why is Poland demanding $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany, but not $x trillions from Russia?
You answer the question in your first sentence.
Poland makes requests of Germany because it thinks there is some potential advantage in it. The Polish government thinks that Germany might be ...
- 6,428
55
votes
Do European politicians typically put their pronouns on their social media pages?
Do European politicians typically do this too
(Emphasis mine)
Politicians who sport a pronoun in their profile are not typical in the US. I'm struggling to imagine how they might be more common in ...
- 30.7k
54
votes
Has any country's government concluded they need more decentralization to fight Covid-19 or future pandemics?
Arguably, the United States of America has. Sort of. It's confusing.
The federal government, or rather the president and some of his cabinet, has largely left the response up to individual states. It'...
- 5,252
51
votes
Has there been a non-trivial, stable, and functional anarchy?
Iceland during the Icelandic Commonwealth period is itself one of the closest examples.
For a lengthy period of time in the Middle Ages, it had an island-wide legislative/judicial body but not an ...
- 85.3k
50
votes
Why is abortion such a central issue in US politics, but not in the UK?
In addition to zibadawa timmy's excellent answer, because abortion in the US is a stable Schelling Point for both the Left and the Right, because it is an issue on which essentially no actual debate ...
- 8,686
50
votes
How is the 'right to healthcare' reconciled with the freedom of medical staff to choose where and when they work?
There are two different aspects to this apparent contradiction. When a government signs up to a human rights convention which guarantees a right to healthcare, it needs to pass domestic legislation to ...
- 113k
48
votes
Accepted
Why did some places with a large population become states within a country when other places with smaller populations became countries of their own?
History.
India did consist of many more-or-less sovereign countries before the British came. When decolonization came around and the colonizers left, it split into India and Pakistan, and then ...
- 113k
47
votes
Is there any other country in the world, besides the US, that erects monuments to those who took up arms against it and lost?
Right next door in Canada, there are a couple of counterexamples.
In Winnipeg, there are two statues of Louis Riel, one of them being on the grounds of the provincial legislature, and Louis Riel Day ...
- 686
45
votes
Accepted
Are there other countries besides Türkiye that insist their name be written in English using diacritics (or even other letters) not common in English?
On the UN list of countries, Côte d’Ivoire is the only other country to use a “special” character. From Wikipedia:
in April 1986, the government declared that Côte d'Ivoire (or, more fully, ...
- 7,140
44
votes
Are there any wars other than the 2023 Israel-Hamas War that are named after a country and a political party?
"Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict" is the current title of a Wikipedia page. The Houthis are only a faction in Yemen, but they claim to be the legitimate government, IIRC. Their own wiki page ...
42
votes
Is there any other country in the world, besides the US, that erects monuments to those who took up arms against it and lost?
According to wikipedia the Romans built a number statues to honor their defeated Carthaginian enemy Hannibal.
- 2,468
39
votes
Why can Canada’s parliament vote (on gun laws), but even when a single party controls both the U.S. House and Senate a change is all but impossible?
The biggest single difference is that in Canada the House of Commons is unequivocally the highest power in the land. If the House of Commons votes to do something then it will happen.
The Senate can ...
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37
votes
Do people in countries besides the US react negatively to "militarized police"?
There is a lot of confusion regarding the French Gendarmerie, fueled by descriptions like “military police” or “military force with law enforcement duty” which are technically correct but do not fully ...
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37
votes
Why is the Swiss Political Model not Replicated / Proposed Elsewhere?
Don't forget extreme federalism, a key feature of the Swiss model
I would add at least one more key element of the Swiss model, which is that it is a federal system that pushes political authority for ...
- 85.3k
36
votes
Has the US said why electing judges is bad in Mexico but good in the US?
It is not clear that the premise of the question is strictly correct. The ambassador, and indeed the Biden administration, may well be opposed to the election of judges in the United States as well. ...
- 16.8k
34
votes
Accepted
Do European politicians typically put their pronouns on their social media pages?
Interesting question. I compiled a partial answer for Sweden. Swedish is rather similar to English with regards to pronouns and genders.
I assumed that if there where any pronouns on twitter pages ...
- 463
33
votes
In most U.S. states, female genital mutilation is illegal. So why is male circumcision legal?
It takes time for things to change. 200 years ago slavery was legal. 50 years ago genital mutilation was acceptable, and so was electroshock therapy for gay people. Today those things sound like ...
- 2,640
31
votes
Is there any other country in the world, besides the US, that erects monuments to those who took up arms against it and lost?
Here are two examples from Sweden. The modern Kingdom of Sweden is generally said to have been founded by Gustav Vasa, who ascended the throne in 1523. These examples assume that Sweden fulfills the ...
- 1,687
27
votes
Has there been a non-trivial, stable, and functional anarchy?
Short Answer - no
Slightly longer answer
It is really dependent on your definition of anarchy. For most of human history, societies have been organised without the existence of a centralised ...
- 379
27
votes
Has any country's government concluded they need more decentralization to fight Covid-19 or future pandemics?
Arguably, Russia did.
Traditional Russian response to any problem in the last 20 years is to do everything on federal level to be able to praise V. V. Putin. All decision making process is ...
- 17.6k
25
votes
Accepted
Are there countries in Europe where there's a 10% (or similar, but low) numeric threshold for minority language rights?
In North Macedonia, Amendment V to the Constitution - passed in 2001 after the signing of the Ohrid Agreement between the government and the Albanian minority - enshrines the status of 'official ...
CDJB♦
- 108k
24
votes
Accepted
Are there countries where being non-vaccinated disqualifies you from "standard" health insurance coverage (for that particular disease)?
I don’t know of any countries other than Singapore that have taken this step yet, but in the Indian state of Kerala, the Chief Minister announced a similar policy at the end of November:
After a ...
CDJB♦
- 108k
24
votes
Are there countries where being non-vaccinated disqualifies you from "standard" health insurance coverage (for that particular disease)?
In Germany (14 out of 16 states), voluntarily unvaccinated people who are quarantined as a contact person are not paid money in lieu of wages if they cannot go to work, while vaccinacted or ...
- 113k
23
votes
Why is abortion such a central issue in US politics, but not in the UK?
Because when racial segregation failed to cut ice as the banner to get American Evangelicals to vote consistently for one party, they went for abortion instead. Randall Balmer's book Bad Faith: Race ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible