Rethinking the World's Regions

The data from the Country Similarity Index was used to cluster countries into different regions. The index is a statistically-based way to measure this. It weighs equally five major aspects of countries: their demographics, culture, politics, infrastructure, and geography. The methodology is exactly the same for each nation.
Based on the following articles:
objectivelists.com/2022/12/30...
objectivelists.com/2022/02/03...

[@samuela-aegisdottir]

I dont't understand why some maps place Czechia in the same region as Russia and Kazachstan but not as Germany and Austria. Czechia was for 800 years part of the Holy Roman Empire - together with Austria and countries on the territory of today's Germany. It was 400 years in one state with Austria. And just 40 years a communist country, not even part of the Soviet Union. For more than 1000 years, the religion in Czechia has been Western Chistianity (Roman catolicism and later also Protestantism), contrary to Russia, which is Orthodox. This difference played a enormous role in the past and has influence the society in culture in a huge way. It is even still visible on maps, because Western Christian countries adopted latin alphabet, whereas Russia and many other orthodox countries has adopted cyrilic. The use of Latin language as the lingua franca of Western Christian countries enablen incredible intense sharing of ideas among them. The formation of pre-protestant Hussit movement in the Czech lands based on ideas from England is one example of that. The division of East and West Europe used to be where the division of Eastern and Western Christianity was, far more to the East then now. Today, Czech people live a very similar lifestyle as people in West Europe, especially in Austria and Germany. Pork and beer are extremely popular in those three. Czechia is a democracy with stable diversified economy. The GDP per capita is higher than of Portugal. All these three countries are secular with small influence of religion onto politics. People in Europe migh argue that the incomes in Czechia are still lower than in West Europe, but when evaluated from the perspective of the whole world, there is very little difference. The 40 years of communism is the only thing that separates Czechia and West Europe, but East Germany also was a communist vasal of Moscow and noone ever puts Germany into the post-soviet region. Apart from that, the countries are very similar in many ways. We even celebrate Christmass in the very same way as Austrians, on 24th of December with carp and potato salad and presents brought by baby Jesus. TLDR: Czechia was a part of Western Europe before Russia was even a country and the only thing we have in common is the injustice and misery of communism, in a very short period of otherverse long and rich European history.

[@raycambridge8950]

Could you explain how the 12 region grouping relates to the 19 sub-regions you've shown on your website? It's just that North America, Australasia and the UK & Ireland together are already a sub-region of the 19.

[@objectivelists]

You make a good point about North America, Australasia and the UK being split up in this version. This is because very few traditional maps group them together due to extreme distance. This 12 region map takes into account both conventional geography and the data from the Index. BTW... the data suggests that there are 27 world sub-regions: objectivelists.com/2022/09/16/27-sub-regions-of-the-world/

[@raycambridge8950]

@@objectivelists Thanks for clarifying the above. Yes, my mistake - 27 regions, although having had another look, that number seems to vary too (East Timor sometimes being 9-B on its own and an occasional 3-D for Sudan & Mauritania).

[@raycambridge8950]

I just thought I'd add that I think what you're doing is amazing. Having gone through so many indices in such a methodical way, you've built up a great resource and I for one find the resulting insights endlessly fascinating. Thanks again.

[@samuela-aegisdottir]

Russia is a large country with diverse ethnic and religious composition. I would place it as a transitional country between European and Central Asian regions. It has large similarities with post-soviet countries in Central Asia, not only history and script, but also current problems like very high corruption and strong autocratic govermnents. It is also rich on natural resources and has at least partially similar geography. The other Central Asian countries are predominantly muslim, but there are many predominantly muslim regions in Russia too. The governments and law systems are secular. They have connected and compatible infrastruciture and their population is partially mixed by soviet and post-Soviet migration (many Russians in Central Asia and many Central Asians in Russia). They are also together in the Eurasian Economic Union. There are also ethnic, religious and geographical similarities of Russia (especially Siberia) and Mongolia. Russia is not landlocked, but its mainland is very far from any sea. And its access to worlds oceans is surprisingly limited because majority of its coastal water freezes in winter. One of the reasons why Russia is so diffucult to categorize is because it is a colonial empire that has never gave up its colonies. (It would be difficult to fit France and French Africa into a single reagion. Britain shares lots of cultural similarities with Australia, NZ, Canada and USA and they can be easily considered one region, but not together with India and Pakistan). Russia has clear European traits, but also clear traits of the territories it colonised and which it controls now or controled in the past. The categorization is also complicated by the specificy of the Soviet heritage - which connects culturaly and economicaly and politically very distinct countries like Estonia in Europe and Turkmenistan in Asia. And by the communist heritage in general, wich include even broader mix of countries like Latino-American Cuba and East-Asian North Korea....