As the world becomes interconnected, the interest in comparisons among countries has grown. A veritable cottage industry of comparison-spewing institutions has emerged, this author not excepted. Who of the 195–plus sovereign nations on this planet is the most democratic? The happiest? The most innovative? The most electronically connected? No problem, lists exist for everything.
There are reasons for this comparison-list phenomenon. In an era of overloaded information and competition, it organizes information in an easy, ordinal structure. Brazil is more democratic than Argentina, but less than Spain. Canadians are happier than Mongolians. There are index numbers attached to these comparisons, and they provide a scientific veneer.
On the positive side of the ledger, one can better put one’s own country and others in perspective. One can also use these index numbers in data analysis, using each country as a data point, to tease out correlations and even causalities. Is a country happier because it is more democratic, or rich, or has longer vacations? One could, ideally, identify universality, trends beyond a specific national political constellation, yet one could also find particularity -- when a country departs from a bad global trend -- and try to learn from it.