I'm curious why they didn't include the United States (or some other Western countries) as a reference point/baseline since FiveThirtyEight's audience, much like HackerNews, is probably mostly in Western countries...
Not sure how Australia fits in there. Geographically it's eastern but culturally it's western (though that pretty much came as a result of westerners kicking aboriginal people out of their home, so far as I'm aware).
I think that this map is a fairly accurate representation of what the typical American "world-view" is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#/media/File:Clash...
I don't mean to say that it is "correct" in any way, just that it fairly accurately encompasses how many Americans informally loosely categorize different nations/regions.
Where does Japan, NZ and Australia fit in that world view because they are in the east but aligned politically with the west...
I find extremely odd what passes in the concepts inside the minds of some readers here. "Broad definition of the west would include latin america", WTF! Most of the countries here are ex-colonies of European invaders. Most countries are dominated by capitalist interests with mostly democratic governments. What requirement countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, etc are missing?
I wish people paid more attention to whats has been going around the world the past 50 years and got rid of silly outdated concepts of the west, the east and other useless labels.
These labels are frequently debated in light of recent cultural changes and geopolitical events. You will notice that in my comment I mentioned that Latin America can be (and often is) considered to be part of the West, but it is also common to include it in another category.
The same goes for pretty much all of Latin America. Remember, the majority of South Americans are white and steeped in European culture. In my experience it's only Americans that don't consider them part of the west -- often trying to ignore that they have followed every similar development processes and have very similar culture.
This varies greatly between countries in South America, and often within regions of countries. Argentina is an example of a country where what you say is true, but it's somewhat unusual for the region, having killed or displaced most of the indigenous population, somewhat like happened in the United States. Many South American countries are a much a more complex mixture of ethnic and cultural descent. Often the upper classes are more white and more culturally European, while the lower classes are more indigenous and less culturally European. Many countries have active cultural and political conflicts between the these segments; for example Bolivia fairly recently elected its first non-white President (Evo Morales) after years of the minority white-European population forming the ruling class.
That's part of the point, really. It's not a question of regime, nor of geography; it's a definition based on an history of power and influence. See the countries where the IMF directors come from? That's the West. And it's very much not outdated.
It's a historical term, and one that hasn't been widely considered to be insensitive. You can argue that it is, but arguing that people using it are is just being ignorant of history.
It is just like when we say "The South" in the US we are usually referring to the historical and political south (i.e. the Confederate States or more generally the Southeast). You will rarely if ever hear someone refer to somewhere west of Texas as The South.
So it can't be cultural, so it could be ethnocentric and therefore was my question for you.
Europe, North America, and Latin America are all very different in all but a few superficial ways, but I do find that Europe and North America are more like each other than either is like Latin America.
"Latin America" is very big area and it overlaps with North America. In my experience the most European-like country in the Americas is by far Argentina.
Europe and North America are very big places too. Both have regions with differing cultures to various extents, as well.
Australia is down -41%, although it may be an outlier because we have been a leader in making it hard to sell/market cigarettes, and they're very heavily taxed.