USA government is just a puppet of lobbying groups IE: private companies. Thankfully Europe doesn't reach that level yet

Because they have multi-party elections, this is probably the single biggest root cause that impacts all levels of government activity and accountability.

With an actual, working multi party system there is less polarisation, and most parties don't actively hate each other to the point of opposing anything the other supports.

Also the political system behind the passing of law is different, although I don't know enough to explain it.

This is an extremely complex topic with lots of factors. You could write books about it and not enconpass everything.

Just one point among lots others:

Because Europe (with exceptions) in general works with a proportional system, not a majority system.

The parties that get into parliament are proportional to the votes, not the one who got the most votes gets to decide.

This results in European lawmakers being forced to work together with their opponents to do shit, which creates a culture of cooperation and civility. For example, you can't accuse your opponent of being a baby eating communist reptile during campaign because then they won't work with you afterwards.

There are a lot of reasons for that. Most of them start with FPTP voting, which ultimately leads to less parties being present in a parliament and less democratic representation ofthe actual will of the people, which in turn leads to radicalisation, which in turn leads to the inability to compromise because this would look "weak" for the more radicalized people in the party.

Another problem is the disparity between population and representation in US politics This is based on the founding fathers' dislike of people living in cities due to their experience with London back in the time. They got it wrong for the wrong reasons, but US politics still considers even the most outdated notions of the founding fathers as gospel and won't fix the most glaring issues that plague US politics.

Aside from the multi party systems, i'd say another important reason is that EU countries tend to have a political spectrum.

The US has a far right party with LGBT rights and weed and a reactionary fascist party. But actually progressive or even a lot of conservative positions are not represented in politics at all. Even Obama was against general health insurance, which is a system most conservatives in the EU value.

So the space of political positions even on the table is much smaller and there is no need to compromise, as for instance neither US party opposes total surveillance of the citizens and the idea that doing any form of business with a company does not grant it the total ownership of that persons privacy just doesnt exist in the political debate.

Something like GDPR and Digital Markets Act is easier to pass in Europe because it hurts big US tech companies most. In more controversial areas the EU is much less effective.

The US system was functional when the two parties worked together and compromised on policy issues. it has unfortunately evolved into “ Red team good, Blue team bad” bickering as a result of the various culture war and social issues that have been overhyped by various vocal minorities. That and the indoctrination of the masses by far-right christo-fascist nationalists.

Easy: it's not first pass the post or "winner takes all". You have more variety in your parties and thus voters can identify more accurately with one. Of course there is still the problem of counting votes that isn't solved, as people can still vote more strategically instead of ideologically ("I'll vote for that party, because it's more likely to win against the big party I dislike").

Money cannot control every ideology.

The rural areas command far more power due to the way the founding fathers wrote everything. This means the least equipped areas have nearly as much power as cities or states with millions of people, where most of the commerce flows. Rural areas then decide policies for the country, while also having worse education on the whole.

Corruption has also weakened votes in the form of gerrymandering, essentially splitting up the power of cities by slicing them up like a pizza and attaching them to much larger rural areas to dilute their power as much as possible. It's difficult to undo once done.

To unfuck everything, we have to rebalance power that weights voting heavily in favor of areas with large populations- who coincidentally also vote yes on programs like SNAP (foodstamps) and vote yes for social safety nets like medicaid and public schools- all things rural areas benefit the most from.

They didn't have a civil war, welcome the attackers back without punishment, then have them form an opposition party dedicated to rotting the system from the inside so they can retroactively win the war they lost.

Indeed Europe makes a lot more progress from the point of view of human beings (as opposed to the point of view of corps). But it’s worth noting that Europe can’t actually make effective use of their legislation. No teeth.

Take the #GDPR for example. EU courts are weak, so when your GDPR rights are violated in Europe you have no recourse. You can file a complaint with the DPA under article 77, but the DPA just sits on these complaints because there is no law that forces DPAs to act on article 77 complaints. The GDPR says you can take direct action in court, but the Austrians have neutered that option. Someone sued a GDPR offender, an Austrian court sided with the victim, but then the victim was still forced to eat his own legal costs! That precedent-setting decision killed the only means for remedy.

A courtroom victory in Europe is purely symbolic. The winner still loses from a cost standpoint.

The US is much better w.r.t court actions. Court cases are cheap & easy to open. When you win, the loser pays the legal costs. it works really well. But the problem is there are no decent laws in the US to empower people to take legal action.

What we need is EU legislation with a US court system.

I might be totally wrong, but I suspect that it's linked to Napoleon spreading civil law over (continental) Europe. To my understanding (IANAL) the key innovation in the concept of civil law is something like Everything which isn't forbidden by the law is allowed which created a culture of precise and detailed laws While, still to my understanding US style common law let more room to the judge to interpret laws and make decision even if there isn't a law yet (which is why their judges are elected officials and that in the US abortion law comes from the Supreme court not from lawmakers)

The fact that we expect detailed and precised law is also why lawmaker will spend time to write them.

That said, I wouldn't mock too much the political mess in the US, most of Europe isn't doing that well. Belgium stays 1-2 years without government after every election, Spain has a region which unilaterally tried to secede, Hungary/Poland have serious authoritarians tendencies, the European council still decides who leads the commission rather than the European Parliament, and let's not speak about the Brexit fiasco, these are definitely symptoms that our system(s) don't work that well.

Radical conservatives who are not interested in a compromise gained a lot of power in the USA. Because as long as enough people are interested in finding a compromise, you can always find one.

EU is more defensive and protectionist because our companies are a lot smaller due to a more fragmented internal market, more regulation, and getting damaged/destroyed in WW2. Notice that this all hits big tech and that the EU has nothing similar on this front. I don't think the EU capital owners would push for this otherwise and that is basically all the EU listens to. A nice side effect is that it usually is actually good regulation to protect their citizens.

In terms of the EU what works are laws, which do not require complete consensus of all countries. As soon as somebody can veto, that is nearly guranteed to happen, in many cases for reason with only partial relation to law past. That happend for example with Hungary and sanctions on Russia.

Other then that diversity. There are 7 large groups in the EU parliament for example, but they are then made up of individual canidates from different parties. So basicly no group can push throu laws by themself and the individual canidates often vote against the groups intrest as well. Not most of the time, but it is relativly common. But everybody knows compromise is needed and so they work together in per law alliances to pass laws. A similar thing happens with countries as well for votes which do not require everybody to agree. You basicly just need a few of the big members to agree on something and then form a temporary alliance with other members. That is were this France and Germany run the EU stuff comes from. Both sites politicans meet each other a lot and when they agree on something, it tends to be well enough thought out and a good enough idea to get other smaller members to agree on it, to pass it.

That being said as soon as vetos are involved nothing works anymore, which is why some things have to be moved to non veto as soon as possible. Mainly foreign policy.

Cuz we were the alpha tester and refuse to update it