A few years ago, this author decided to count how many countries he had been to. The count was 45. But does anybody know what percentage that represents?

You would think that is a fairly straight-forward question. Shouldn’t the definition of a country be any land with a defined border with a functioning government? According to The Economist, what defines a country is not straight-forward at all.

  • The U.S. Department for Homeland Security, in its application for a visa, lists 251 choices for a country.
  • Registering for a Microsoft Hotmail account lists 242 countries.
  • There are 192 members of the United Nations.
  • Kosovo, a country the U.S. went to war to protect its sovereignty, has no internet domain, international football team, nor phone prefix. It has to rent its dialing codes from Monaco and Somalia.

How would you define a country?