I have given a lot of thought to this topic. Like you, I have lived in a number of countries - the US, England, France, and Singapore. The best managed country I lived in was Singapore, which incidentally was one of the worst managed before independence in 1965. The founder Lee Kwan Yew attributed his success to a strong civil service - if a country gets that right, the rest will follow. The civil service is the software that keeps the rest of society going. I believe this is the determinant variable more so than culture and/or religion. Countries that have followed Lee's playbook - Vietnam, Brunei, and even Cambodia have all done well. Lee came to this realization when he studied at Cambridge in England for his law degree. The important thing is that the civil service must be efficient as well as not corruptible. In England's case, the civil service was composed of the Church of England and the Admiralty - both systems were meritocracies at their core. Homo Sapiens in general are crappy, that is something that you can bank on. They need to be guided.