This is all the more disquieting since these governments purport to value fairness, justice and freedom as the defining characteristics of their nations.
If we have the most polluted main street on the planet, then it is likely that we are taking on characteristics of developing nations: rapid development and urbanisation with insufficient regard for people who live around it, who most probably won't ever benefit from it.
In fact, the literature is littered with interpretations of what even counts as growth characteristics for nations [24 29].
The book shows how fundamental characteristics of the nation and its politics the state of the economy, the Obama presidency, and the demographics of the political parties combined with the candidates' personalities and rhetoric to produce one of the most unexpected presidencies in history.
Balance of power and electoral democracy became the defining political characteristics of these nation-states.
It is busy acquiring many of the characteristics of a nation-state, while actually creating something newer and more complicated.
Athletes went where the money was, often before they were fully formed, and before long the peculiar characteristics of each nation's sporting culture got diluted and homogenized.
Sampling methods have their roots in attempts to measure the characteristics of a nation's population by using only a part instead of the whole population, i.e., a census.
They also began, albeit modestly, to flirt with some of the characteristics of a nation organising itself for war at home: tightening security, sometimes at the cost of civil liberties, and creating a new government department for homeland defence.
No doubt some will view these as yet more blinkered contributions to an anti-Spanish agenda, but pause for a moment and consider what would have happened if Jason Kidd and LeBron James, as members of the American squad en route to an international competition, had posed for a photograph which showed them mimicking the racial characteristics of the nation to which they were travelling.
No city or region is ever likely to replicate exactly the population characteristics of a nation and Tyne and Wear is no exception.
