ABSTRACT
It is difficult to state exactly how many countries there are in the world in any given year, as has been explained in Chapter 1. The set of sovereign states in existence in the 1990s forms a mosaic of pieces of enormously different shapes and sizes. To alter the analogy, they are like the pieces in a kaleidoscope, shaken about to form new combinations following each of the two world wars and, lately, from the breakup of the USSR. The countries of the world have reached their present state in an unplanned way and do not form a balanced and effective system for the organisation of affairs at global level. Table 2.3 has vital statistics about the size and colonial origin of the countries: their population size in 1993 and expected population in 2025, territorial extent and total real GDP. The great range in the size of countries according to all three variables is evident even among the 100 with the largest populations, and is stretched even more when another 100 or more smaller countries are also taken into account. Table 2.4 shows the remaining countries with more than 3 million inhabitants.
