The Country is the Natural Unit of Policy Analysis

This post is to explain why comparative policy analysis must start with sovereign states, rather than their subnational entities. This includes urbanism, despite the anti-national orientation of some urbanists. In particular, all of the following claims that I routinely have to deal with are incorrect: The claim by Americans that the US must actually be compared with the EU, and its states with EU member states, on matters of economic and social performance. The more fundamental claim by Americans that American states, subcultures, ethnic groups, and other subdivisions are so different from one another that they have to be compared with European nation-states and the US writ large is too diverse to be so compared. The claim by urbanists that metropolitan areas are a more natural unit of analysis than states, for example the transnational Blue Banana as opposed to the EU member states (and UK) that it overlaps. Policy and politics Politics in virtually all first-world democracies is…