Australia

Australia is the only continent governed as a single nation, and its political system reflects the geographic reality: a federation of six states and two territories with mandatory voting that produces turnout above 90%, removing the participation asymmetry that distorts most democracies. The economy runs on mining — iron ore, coal, lithium, and natural gas constitute over half of export revenue — creating a resource dependency that economists call the 'resource curse' but that Australia has managed better than most through sovereign wealth mechanisms and a floating exchange rate that absorbs commodity price shocks. The political system alternates between Labor and Liberal-National coalitions with remarkable stability; no Australian government has been removed by military intervention, constitutional crisis, or revolution in over a century of federation. The biological parallel is a large-bodied endotherm in an arid environment — metabolically expensive to maintain but buffered against short-term environmental shocks by sheer resource reserves.