With Python, in the past things were a little trickier with easy install, but these days the library's web page would probably have told me to type:
pip install third_party_library
Aside from developing on Windows with C extension libraries, those are increasingly rare. Pip + virtualenv works wonders, and the latter has been folded into the most recent official release of CPython (3.3), so it's now officially the right way to do Python package management, as opposed to simply the de facto approach.
As someone who's had to use both, I will say that my experience with even the most basic, functionality in Java's package management is a nightmare, whereas learning how to use the same basic functionality in pip/virtualenv was so easy, I wondered why I'd been putting it off so long.
It doesn't have to be:
You should check out Apache Buildr (http://buildr.apache.org/). It gives you the power of Maven repos with a Ruby "front end". And, yes, I know it's imperative and not declarative but I find that the build files tend to be small and understandable.
But I found JarFinder in IntelliJ to be a good replacement for many needs. You just start using a class and it suggests a couple of jar's to download and reference. :)
I lost hours trying to set up Maven to download one library and build my project. All the documentation pages seemed to point to other documentation pages. I ended up trying to download about 30 jars manually, but the versions seemed to clash. I am convinced that the best thing a programming language can to do improve adoption is not to create a JVM version, but to create a package management system like pip/npm/NuGet.