This is precisely one of the assumptions that I am, humbly, questioning. It's more complex than that. Are the French so unlike all their governments and regimes? Are Americans that much unlike their leaders and political system? Is any society, really, thus separable in parts, beyond the abstraction of analysis? And what happens to ideas formed abstractly, in a vacuum, as they land in reality?

I mean, you can make the factual, scientific category; you may reason about it and build models that work to some extent; but reality is never clear cut, it's always hyper-complex in comparison of any short statement (hence why it's hard to meaningfully discuss such concepts in less than articles, ideally books). That's one my take-aways from a few years of sociology. Some things you just can't condense, even if it makes for a witty and intuitive proposition. Rigid values, as opposed to starting from relativity, really is the enemy of the thinker in a complex/chaotic environment such as those attemptedly described by the social sciences.

Just my 2cts. Claiming that "politicians are A, but the people are B!" is already a dubious proposition that lacks substance beneath its romantic appeal; but generalized to a massively distributed yet pyramidal political system of 1.5 billion people, it's sociologically nonsensical.

I don't really have anything to add, but thanks for the reply. It's an interesting topic.