I had been a county party chairman for several years. I then went to Turkey as a visiting professor at Marmara U. I offered to give a faculty seminar on the organization of American political parties. After my talk, the first question I got was, how much money do the parties get from the government? There, the parties are financed by the government, and they assumed ours were too. As a result, Turkish parties don't have to pay any attention to the wants of their supposed members.
As an aside, the second question I got was, do I think OJ was guilty. I said yes.