Why are Canada and the US so socially different?

[Jub]

Both nations started off as colonies to European powers, had periods where the government wasn't strong enough to protect people who needed them, and both had a western expansion through lands controlled by first nations. Yet one nation is more violent, has larger wealth gaps, and a weaker social safety net than the other. My question is what caused these two nations to develop so differently?

Population might be one thing, but we see other nations with equal population density that didn't follow the path the US took. Slavery could be another, but Canada had that too. Both nations had poor relationships with the natives so that can't be the deciding factor.

So why does America have so many issues that Canada doesn't?

[Stark]

Go read what each country was like in the 19th century and how their cultures developed. Then ask yourself how long any distinction will last in a homogenised world.

[Jub]

I can do the reading myself easy enough, but I'm more interested to see what the people of the board think on this one.

[Simon_Jester]

Jub, if you think slavery wasn't a major issue, you're fooling yourself by not looking at the history and demographics.

The US had a large region where 1/3 of the population were slaves, mostly owned by plantation aristocrats. And since the slavery was racial, the racial bias lasted long after the slaves were freed. That alone caused the US a lot of damage and social trauma- delayed industrialization in the cash-crop South, a major civil war that killed something like 3% of the entire American population, a prolonged refusal of Southern whites to reconcile to the general direction of politics elsewhere in the nation made worse by the chronic poverty of the South as a region...

It's not the only cause, but it's pretty hard to underestimate just how much better off America would be if it didn't have to deal with the legacy of race-based chattel slavery.

[Jub]

Jub, if you think slavery wasn't a major issue, you're fooling yourself by not looking at the history and demographics.

The US had a large region where 1/3 of the population were slaves, mostly owned by plantation aristocrats. And since the slavery was racial, the racial bias lasted long after the slaves were freed. That alone caused the US a lot of damage and social trauma- delayed industrialization in the cash-crop South, a major civil war that killed something like 3% of the entire American population, a prolonged refusal of Southern whites to reconcile to the general direction of politics elsewhere in the nation made worse by the chronic poverty of the South as a region...

It's not the only cause, but it's pretty hard to underestimate just how much better off America would be if it didn't have to deal with the legacy of race-based chattel slavery.

I likely know more American history than an American does Canadian history, but understand that I haven't taken even high school grade courses on the subject. I obviously know about the civil war, and I would have been able to tell you about the key battles if we talked about this when I was still taking my AP war and society course. However I wasn't aware that roughly an 8th of the population of the US was comprised of second class citizens.

The really funny thing is the way in which history repeats itself. America is in a bad way now in no small part because of what were essentially corporations doing things to increase profit margins. Now look at other events in US history and you can see a nation that is being throttled by the hand of the free market. Yet somehow most of America sees it in the exact opposite way...

[Irbis]

Now look at other events in US history and you can see a nation that is being throttled by the hand of the free market. Yet somehow most of America sees it in the exact opposite way...

Gee, guess who has more money to pay writers of history books and the press to spread his version of 'reality' around?

[Jub]

Now look at other events in US history and you can see a nation that is being throttled by the hand of the free market. Yet somehow most of America sees it in the exact opposite way...

Gee, guess who has more money to pay writers of history books and the press to spread his version of 'reality' around?

Yet somehow people still manage to question things if they're raised correctly or have the inclination to learn... Funny that.

[Broomstick]

My question is what caused these two nations to develop so differently?

Well, for starters the US became an independent nation by force of arms and revolution, whereas Canada remained a colony until granted independence. There's a major difference right there, right from the start of the US. I don't think it's the only factor that sent the to nations down divergent paths but it's certainly one of them.

[Jub]

My question is what caused these two nations to develop so differently?

Well, for starters the US became an independent nation by force of arms and revolution, whereas Canada remained a colony until granted independence. There's a major difference right there, right from the start of the US. I don't think it's the only factor that sent the to nations down divergent paths but it's certainly one of them.

I guess the United States has been a nation of fighters right from the start. The way the natives were dealt with, the sheer number of imported slaves. America seems to have been big, loud, and violent right from the start.

---

The odd thing is that America seems to be a nation of easilly lead people who think they're self made everymen. Do American's really believe their own hype that often?

[Simon_Jester]

I likely know more American history than an American does Canadian history, but understand that I haven't taken even high school grade courses on the subject...

That is really a very bad way to lead into your remarks, you know? Even if it's true, it makes you sound very likely to make mistakes out of ignorance. "I know more about your history than you do about mine, even though I never even studied it in high school, so here's my version of your country's history, as I learned it from bubblegum wrappers and loud Internet people..."

However I wasn't aware that roughly an 8th of the population of the US was comprised of second class citizens.

During what era?

If you mean pre-1865, slaves weren't citizens at all, any more than they were in ancient Rome. If you mean from after the Civil War to the desegregation era of the 1950s and '60s, then yes, African-Americans were second-class citizens who made up roughly 10% of the population (more or less) throughout that era. After the '60s, legal second-class citizenship has gone away, but we still have ongoing problems with poverty, access to education, family stability, and so on. They form a big interlocking complex that isn't going away easily; other countries with similar racial minorities that got treated badly for generations have pretty much the same problems.

The really funny thing is the way in which history repeats itself. America is in a bad way now in no small part because of what were essentially corporations doing things to increase profit margins.

Southern plantation owners were not even slightly like modern corporations. They were more like feudal nobility lording it over a manor full of serfs, with the entire thing being their personal property. The only thing a plantation aristocrat and a corporation have in common is money- and many plantation owners weren't even that rich; their income from cash crops was balanced against a lot of debts and expenses.

Now look at other events in US history and you can see a nation that is being throttled by the hand of the free market. Yet somehow most of America sees it in the exact opposite way...

Jub, while I might agree with some of the words that come out of your mouth, I find it very hard to trust the quality or depth of your analysis, so I'm not going to say much about this one way or the other.

I guess the United States has been a nation of fighters right from the start. The way the natives were dealt with, the sheer number of imported slaves. America seems to have been big, loud, and violent right from the start.
---
The odd thing is that America seems to be a nation of easilly lead people who think they're self made everymen. Do American's really believe their own hype that often?

Does Jub do his analysis properly? Or is he just looking for excuses to make half-informed rants about how shitty America is?

I mean, I could equally well say "Canada seems to have been meek, complacent, provincial and monocultural right from the start. The odd thing is that Canada seems to be a nation of easily organized identical people who think they're especially good at governing themselves. Do Canadian's really believe their own hype that often?"

But that would be nonsense, right? And yet it seems about as intellectually honest as the way you're going about things. I would never seriously propose to summarize the entire nation of Canada that way, but you seem to have done it about the US without a second thought.

[Broomstick]

Keep in mind that when you say "American" you're talking about 1/3 of a billion people - while you can generalize to some extent remember that exceptions are legion.

It's not so much the majority believe they are totally self-made, it's that that is the ideal to which most aspire.

There is substantial irony in just how readily Americans can be lead by someone spouting the correct words. Then again, self-reflection, self-doubt, and self-questioning are not American ideals.

[Simon_Jester]

I have a hard time thinking of a country where those are universal ideals.

"Question your own assumptions and change frequently" doesn't seem to be the kind of philosophy that digs in and gets wide mass appeal. Except maybe during unusual periods of social ferment (like 1960s youth culture in the West).

[Darth Wong]

A list of major items which I suspect of contributing to the difference between American and Canadian culture:

1) The American Revolution Mythology. We all know that the way Americans are taught about their Glorious Peoples Revolution is a white-washed crock, but it's a crock that makes them feel good about themselves. It basically becomes a sort of religion, complete with holy prophets (the "Founding Fathers"), pilgrimages to shrines like Mount Rushmore, and rituals. The world has many other countries, but most of those countries don't have the luxury of saying "our nation began with the events of this one story, which I'm going tell you about now". For most countries, they think of their current system of government as merely its latest stage of evolution, not as a distinct invention of a bunch of heroes. A lot of Americans' self-image and social conduct can be tied to the way they feel about that story, ie- how completely they've bought into it, how important it is to their personal self-identity and self-worth, etc.

2) Slavery. Already mentioned. What hasn't been mentioned is that Canada didn't just have less slavery than the US; Lord Simcoe abolished it in Canada with the Act Against Slavery in 1793, many years before it was abolished throughout the British Empire. So you didn't just have two neighbouring countries, one of which had more slavery: you had two neighbouring countries, one of which was unusually backward-looking on the issue of slavery and one of which was unusually forward-looking on the issue of slavery. The contrast was sharper than people realize.

3) Self-selection. If we consider the possibility that our biology may play a role in our social tendencies, then it would stand to reason that people who were naturally more inclined to rebellious behaviour would have joined the rebellion in the US, while those inclined to prefer social order and stability would have remained loyalists and been driven out of the US. Therefore, there may have been a slight evolutionary group differentiation which took place during the American Revolutionary War: people who leaned toward social order would have moved north, and people who dislike social order would have moved south. Even if we reject the possibility that our social tendencies are influenced by DNA, this could be construed as a social differentiation rather than a biological one, and would still have lasting effects.

4) Climate. Is it really a coincidence that the world's most fanatically religious regimes seem to cluster in very hot climates, or that some of the world's least religious nations happen to be situated in colder areas? If there is some link between climate and religiosity, then that would be another significant distinction between Canada and the US. People like Jared Diamond would probably go farther and theorize that a cold climate has all sorts of effects on the development of societies, even if for no other reason than the need to plan ahead, conserve supplies for the long winter, and possibly work together in a more social co-operative way to overcome the dangers and difficulties posed by this environment.

[Spoonist]

Correct me if I'm wrong on Canada here, but wasnt' the immigrants to Canada much more likely to be there for work/livelyhood reasons ie fur etc?
We can see a big difference all throughout history on immigrants if they are running away from something or moving to something. Lots of religious folks that were persecuted in the old world moved to the new world and settled in the southern colonies. While the only big religious folks in Canada was Jesuits and Catholics if I don't misremember.
So a lot of the original sentiment of Canada and especially after 1812 & 1837 was folks that trusted the powers in charge, while a substantial part of the US has always mistrusted any gov.

[Simon_Jester]

2) Slavery. Already mentioned. What hasn't been mentioned is that Canada didn't just have less slavery than the US; Lord Simcoe abolished it in Canada with the Act Against Slavery in 1793, many years before it was abolished throughout the British Empire. So you didn't just have two neighbouring countries, one of which had more slavery: you had two neighbouring countries, one of which was unusually backward-looking on the issue of slavery and one of which was unusually forward-looking on the issue of slavery. The contrast was sharper than people realize.

Abolition in several of the northern states came within about a generation of that time- which is probably not a surprise; the northern states looked more like Canada than the southern states did. Mostly white population, no big slave plantations.

Meanwhile, the southern states looked more like the Caribbean- where slavery lasted longer, and would probably have lasted longer yet if it weren't for all those sugar plantation islands being owned by big empires that drowned out the sugar planters' political power.

I bet you could draw a very interesting correlation between the time at which slavery was banned in a country, and the proportion of its economy and social elite whose fortunes depended on slavery.

3) Self-selection. If we consider the possibility that our biology may play a role in our social tendencies, then it would stand to reason that people who were naturally more inclined to rebellious behaviour would have joined the rebellion in the US, while those inclined to prefer social order and stability would have remained loyalists and been driven out of the US. Therefore, there may have been a slight evolutionary group differentiation which took place during the American Revolutionary War: people who leaned toward social order would have moved north, and people who dislike social order would have moved south. Even if we reject the possibility that our social tendencies are influenced by DNA, this could be construed as a social differentiation rather than a biological one, and would still have lasting effects.

I don't think there was a lot of north -> south movement by antiroyalists, Darth.

Plus, wouldn't you also expect a very different 'biological' effect to come in when you start factoring in the massive surge of immigration the US got to puff its population up to its present size? The US had a lot more random Germans, Italians, Poles and so on moving in than Canada did. What did that do to our national genome?

Most of those people just wanted a better shot at economic success, which they defined in terms of "own my own farm or store or shop."

4) Climate. Is it really a coincidence that the world's most fanatically religious regimes seem to cluster in very hot climates, or that some of the world's least religious nations happen to be situated in colder areas?

I would be very reluctant to accept this hypothesis. Nations like India are strongly religious but not systematically fanatical. Nations like Tibet were de facto theocracies for a long time. Most of Europe was de facto theocratic (certainly by your standards) for centuries in the past, including the Little Ice Age.

So yeah, I think it's probably a coincidence, this clustering of which you speak.

If there is some link between climate and religiosity, then that would be another significant distinction between Canada and the US. People like Jared Diamond would probably go farther and theorize that a cold climate has all sorts of effects on the development of societies, even if for no other reason than the need to plan ahead, conserve supplies for the long winter, and possibly work together in a more social co-operative way to overcome the dangers and difficulties posed by this environment.

Large portions of the US have a fairly heavy winter, or other routine natural threats that demand planning and foresight (like hurricanes hitting every five years).

[Spoonist]

I bet you could draw a very interesting correlation between the time at which slavery was banned in a country, and the proportion of its economy and social elite whose fortunes depended on slavery.

Unfortunately, some of the european countries who were late in making a full ban did not really profit from it and only kept it around due to stupidity and oversight. Normally this was because they had abolished it at home, and the trade, but hadn't solved the issue of already existing slaves in some forgotten colony with different jurisdiction.
So countries like Denmark who outlawed it (again) from 1803, really didn't abolish it in all of their colonies until 1848 and then only indirectly. Same thing with Sweden who according to law and king didn't have it at all when asked in 1780s. Then when britain asked around again after they themselves had ended it sweden declared the trade illegal in 1813 and later put a death penalty on it. Conveniently forgetting an island in the carribean owned by swedish private interests, which did in fact trade in slaves to the US from africa but outside the jurisdiction of sweden due to freeport status. So its not until 1846-7 that the matter becomes a small scandal and sweden purchases the liberty of all remaining slaves there to make it end pragmatically.
Neither Denmark nor Sweden really made any fortune in african slaves, their non-european colonial ventures for both countries being big money drains.

So sometimes it remained just due to stupidity and loopholes.

[Darth Wong]

Abolition in several of the northern states came within about a generation of that time- which is probably not a surprise; the northern states looked more like Canada than the southern states did. Mostly white population, no big slave plantations.

Fair enough.

I don't think there was a lot of north -> south movement by antiroyalists, Darth.

Maybe not, but there was certainly a lot of northern movement by loyalists. There was a bona fide refugee scenario in Canada, and even people merely suspected of loyalist leanings were often attacked, lynched, and driven out of the US (and their property was seized afterwards, which worked out quite well for the accusers). That alone would create substantial differentiation, ie- removing a particular element of the population with certain social leanings.

Plus, wouldn't you also expect a very different 'biological' effect to come in when you start factoring in the massive surge of immigration the US got to puff its population up to its present size? The US had a lot more random Germans, Italians, Poles and so on moving in than Canada did. What did that do to our national genome?

Most of those people just wanted a better shot at economic success, which they defined in terms of "own my own farm or store or shop."

Where did you read that the US has a much greater proportion of diverse ethnic immigrants than Canada?

4) Climate. Is it really a coincidence that the world's most fanatically religious regimes seem to cluster in very hot climates, or that some of the world's least religious nations happen to be situated in colder areas?

I would be very reluctant to accept this hypothesis. Nations like India are strongly religious but not systematically fanatical. Nations like Tibet were de facto theocracies for a long time. Most of Europe was de facto theocratic (certainly by your standards) for centuries in the past, including the Little Ice Age.

You can't compare the present to the past that way. The entire world was theocratic by modern standards in the past.

So yeah, I think it's probably a coincidence, this clustering of which you speak.

And yet it's such a strong correlation that I think it's reckless and premature to dismiss it as casually as you are suggesting.

If there is some link between climate and religiosity, then that would be another significant distinction between Canada and the US. People like Jared Diamond would probably go farther and theorize that a cold climate has all sorts of effects on the development of societies, even if for no other reason than the need to plan ahead, conserve supplies for the long winter, and possibly work together in a more social co-operative way to overcome the dangers and difficulties posed by this environment.

Large portions of the US have a fairly heavy winter, or other routine natural threats that demand planning and foresight (like hurricanes hitting every five years).

And as you acknowledge above, those portions of the US often have cultural values which tend to move closer to those of Canada.

[Junghalli]

I would be very reluctant to accept this hypothesis. Nations like India are strongly religious but not systematically fanatical. Nations like Tibet were de facto theocracies for a long time. Most of Europe was de facto theocratic (certainly by your standards) for centuries in the past, including the Little Ice Age.

So yeah, I think it's probably a coincidence, this clustering of which you speak.

There's another option besides climate and coincidence. If you look at a world map, the world north of 40 N is mostly made up of European and European diaspora countries (there is little inhabited land south of 40 S to make a comparison, and one of the prominent ones - New Zealand - is also a European diaspora country). By contrast, the people living between 30 N - 30 S are overwhelmingly not European-descended. Given this, it really would come as no surprise to me that the cold belt would have common distinct cultural features - because it's mostly basically a demographic and cultural extension of Europe.

[Darth Wong]

I would be very reluctant to accept this hypothesis. Nations like India are strongly religious but not systematically fanatical. Nations like Tibet were de facto theocracies for a long time. Most of Europe was de facto theocratic (certainly by your standards) for centuries in the past, including the Little Ice Age.

So yeah, I think it's probably a coincidence, this clustering of which you speak.

There's another option besides climate and coincidence. If you look at a world map, the world north of 40 N is mostly made up of European and European diaspora countries (there is little inhabited land south of 40 S to make a comparison, and one of the prominent ones - New Zealand - is also a European diaspora country). By contrast, the people living between 30 N - 30 S are overwhelmingly not European-descended. Given this, it really would come as no surprise to me that the cold belt would have common distinct cultural features - because it's mostly basically a demographic and cultural extension of Europe.

America is a demographic and cultural extension of Europe, yet its southern half is much more religious than its northern half.

I think people are going about this the wrong way, looking for excuses to dismiss factors. That's not how it's done; if you're conducting a controlled experiment in science you are trying to eliminate factors, but if you're discussing forensic data, you have to consider any factor which might influence the result. Indeed, failing to do so would pollute your thinking by forcing you to explain outcomes only with the few factors remaining. Instead, people are looking for any reason to say "no, we can safely ignore that one".

[Junghalli]

America is a demographic and cultural extension of Europe, yet its southern half is much more religious than its northern half.

Is it really that simple? I'll admit this is just an off-the-cuff guess, but I would guess religiousity in the USA would break down more along the lines of urban vs. rural, coast vs. interior, and northeast and west vs. everywhere else than straightforward north vs. south.

Considering a red state vs. blue state map as a proxy for religiousity, on the (I think fairly reasonable) assumption that Republicans are more religious overall, looking for instance at the one presented here for the 2008 Presidential election (just picked one of the first ones Google turned up), it looks more like south and middle vs. northeast and west to me.

[Darth Wong]

I wasn't saying it's simple: I'm saying that given the very high complexity of a human society, it's foolish to prematurely dismiss a factor such as climate, especially given its significant impact on lifestyle. A shaky rationale such as "I think I've found some other explanation that also works" hardly suffices to justify eliminating it as a factor.

[Junghalli]

Fair enough, but I think it's also fair to question the hypothesis, point out possible holes and alternate possible explanations, and ask somebody advancing it whether and why they think it explains the data better than these alternatives.

Did you have any mechanism in mind why hot climates would correlate with religiousity, or was it just an apparent correlation you noticed?

[Darth Wong]

Fair enough, but I think it's also fair to question the hypothesis, point out possible holes and alternate possible explanations, and ask somebody advancing it whether and why they think it explains the data better than these alternatives.

Did you have any mechanism in mind why hot climates would correlate with religiousity, or was it just an apparent correlation you noticed?

Cold climates force you to work and plan more, which elevates the importance of logic over faith, and gives people more of a sense of control over their own destinies. It's similar to the "rice requires more meticulous planning than wheat" theory of why Asians tend to do better in math, or the "found wealth requires less work than manufactured wealth" theory of why oil-dependent economies tend to be religious.

[Simon_Jester]

Fair enough, but I think it's also fair to question the hypothesis, point out possible holes and alternate possible explanations, and ask somebody advancing it whether and why they think it explains the data better than these alternatives.

Did you have any mechanism in mind why hot climates would correlate with religiousity, or was it just an apparent correlation you noticed?

Cold climates force you to work and plan more, which elevates the importance of logic over faith, and gives people more of a sense of control over their own destinies. It's similar to the "rice requires more meticulous planning than wheat" theory of why Asians tend to do better in math, or the "found wealth requires less work than manufactured wealth" theory of why oil-dependent economies tend to be religious.

I still think I'm within my rights to point out counterexamples, though; see below...

(As to the oil thing, is Nigeria especially religious? Venezuela? The Netherlands? Norway? All of those are countries that have a lot of oil income)

Plus, wouldn't you also expect a very different 'biological' effect to come in when you start factoring in the massive surge of immigration the US got to puff its population up to its present size? The US had a lot more random Germans, Italians, Poles and so on moving in than Canada did. What did that do to our national genome?

Most of those people just wanted a better shot at economic success, which they defined in terms of "own my own farm or store or shop."

Where did you read that the US has a much greater proportion of diverse ethnic immigrants than Canada?

Good question- but would it change anything? Put it this way: suppose the US has "+10 genetic rebelliousness" or something in 1790, assuming there really is such a thing as genetic rebelliousness, which I kind of doubt. Canada, on the other hand, doesn't.

Now bring in huge populations of more or less random people from Europe. That "+10" is going to get diluted pretty hard, unless the immigrants are just as rebellious as the old people were. And if they are that rebellious, then having the same kind of immigrants also going to Canada would increase Canadian rebelliousness. Either way, the gap narrows as you mix in people.

And this is still all based on the idea of genetic rebelliousness, which sounds really unproven and kind of unlikely.

4) Climate. Is it really a coincidence that the world's most fanatically religious regimes seem to cluster in very hot climates, or that some of the world's least religious nations happen to be situated in colder areas?

I would be very reluctant to accept this hypothesis. Nations like India are strongly religious but not systematically fanatical. Nations like Tibet were de facto theocracies for a long time. Most of Europe was de facto theocratic (certainly by your standards) for centuries in the past, including the Little Ice Age.

You can't compare the present to the past that way. The entire world was theocratic by modern standards in the past.

Why not? If theocracy was universal until so recently, maybe we should look for causes other than climate. Maybe theocracy is a default state and needs no cause or special explanation, it just happens anyway unless something specific intervenes.

While we're at it, in the developed world, Russia is now a very religious country (see what happened to that girl band lately), while also having more people living north of the Arctic Circle than any other nation in the world.

Confession time, though- I have another reason why I don't care for this argument and don't really trust it. I don't know if you've seen it, but there's a big body of self-congratulatory bullshit made up by Europeans in the 1800s trying to 'explain' why white people are inherently better than all those teeming Negroes and inscrutable Orientals. And a lot of it tried to break out the same argument- somehow, the European climate just made people tougher or smarter or something.

Nobody ever explained why Russia, in many ways the despotic primitive cousin of European society, had the coldest climate of all. So I'm suspicious here.

So yeah, I think it's probably a coincidence, this clustering of which you speak.

And yet it's such a strong correlation that I think it's reckless and premature to dismiss it as casually as you are suggesting.

The coldest large country (Russia) is among the most theocratic of its overall culture (the Western developed nations) while the hottest major country (arguably India) isn't really all that theocratic at all. The very hottest countries (Ethiopia, Libya, Malaysia) aren't especially theocratic. Same goes for the South American countries.

I think your perception is distorted by the fact that:
1) You personally live in a cold country which is not theocratic. Stas Bush might have a different perspective.
2) Islam has many theocratic countries, most of which are in the 'hot' belt of the Middle East because that's where Islam originated and spread in the first place. But Islam wasn't any more fanatical on average than other religions until pretty recently, and you can make a damn good case that it came from other totally different factors that had nothing to do with heat.

If you ask me, it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

Large portions of the US have a fairly heavy winter, or other routine natural threats that demand planning and foresight (like hurricanes hitting every five years).

And as you acknowledge above, those portions of the US often have cultural values which tend to move closer to those of Canada.

What, like Louisiana and Oklahoma (hurricanes and tornadoes, respectively?)

[Mr Bean]

(As to the oil thing, is Nigeria especially religious? Venezuela? The Netherlands? Norway? All of those are countries that have a lot of oil income)

Nigeria is especially religious, religious enough to still burn witches. Venezuela is a mark in your favor but the Netherlands and Norway are not because they existed before the oil money. There were functional stable governments that happen to enjoy a windfall of oil revenue.


The point DW was trying to get across is that these countries were third world affairs with corrupt governments and tight power structures that might crumble overnight only for billions of dollars of oil money to fall into their laps and sudden prosperity. The lottery winner complex in other words. They were religious before because poverty tends to breed religiosity, then they got wealthy and kept that strong religious bent.

Only Venezuela does not fit neatly into my explanation, an exception exists.