When looking at international trends, it doesn't make sense to look at 295 different countries. If you want to look at economics, the top 10 countries make up about 75% of world GDP at nominal rates. Similarly, the top 10 countries hold about 59% of the world's population (note that it's not the same 10 countries). And for military spending, the top 10 account for 75% of the total. If you capture strong trends in these, it will have a marked influence on the total--especially as the big spenders for military are also the big exporters, and the top GDP producers also account for a good chunk of FDI.
Five countries are in the top 10 in all three categories: The United States, China, India, Russia and Japan. (Hmm. Three from Asia... fits right in with current thinking about the Asian century...). Those five should occupy most of our time, then. We should also look at Brazil because of its potential, and France because of its achievement--and I like to throw in the UK, because of its history and the Commonwealth. Which gives us eight countries to explore in depth. Adding those extra three also increases the total percentage of world activity covered on this weblog. I will try to look at each of these under each of the PESTLE categories, and then I'll tend to look at regions to try and give a bit of decent coverage overall.
But! I do take special requests. A lot of people visiting this blog are using country specific search terms and PESTLE. Toss a request my way and we'll see what happens.
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