Hi, I’m interested in reading more about how governments work, and how democratic countries are run, and how various policies have an effect on the different indicators within a game like Democracy. Can someone please recommend a book for a complete beginner, preferably with a UK bias?
Try to hit a bookshop and find books on Comparative Government and Politics. That should include different aspects of governments as well as different case studies
Politics for Dummies…
It probably HASNT been published yet, but seeing that they made “Forensics for dummies” chances are it’ll be in the works or something.
Otherwise I dunno lol 
forensics for dummies???
what next? brain surgery for dummies? 
Go me! 
Not exactly what you’re looking for, probably, but may I recommend Henry George’s Progress and Poverty? It’s an old enough book that the link provided actually links to the entire text (copyright expired quite some time ago), and it contains a discussion of economics from the point of view of attempting to discover the cause of, and therefore the remedy to, the problem of poverty that increases as overall wealth increases. Actually, I’d really like for cliffski to read this, if he ever has the time.
If it seems dry, try reading it aloud, or imagining what it would sound like if read by an impassioned intellectual… The prose is downright beautiful.
The field of research that deals with how government are run is called - academically: Public Management.
It used to be called “Public Administration”. The best way to get introduced to the most recent findings is to browse journals databases. Elsevier, Kluwer, Cilea are some.
You can find some information at http://www.inpuma.net/ and http://www.unpan.org/index1.asp say for example at http://www.unpan.org/autoretrieve/regional.asp?region=europe&content=best%20practices.
There has been a big paradigm shift in public management, something now they call - quite originally - “New Public Management”: so perhaps the best way to start is to get hold of an historical analysis of the various models. Personallyt I studied on Adler, Drucker, Hughes, Metcalf, Dunleavy…
Oh … and in my experience: most of what was written pertains to the UK. The UK government has set - over the years - the best practices according to most.