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Differences Across Countries
The CAGE Distance Framework
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Silverado Squatters, 1883
CHAPTER 1 EMPHASIZED the semiglobalized state of the real world, in which borders continue to matter. This chapter digs deeper into the question of why. The more obvious part of the answer is that large differences arise at borders. The less obvious part concerns how to think about such differences. Instead of treating differences versus similarities in absolute terms, this chapter allows for degrees of difference. It does so by modeling differences in terms of the distances between countries along a variety of Cultural, Administrative/political, ...