It hard to think of two more dissimilar nations, outside of the fact that they both have oil and both coincidentally have almost identical GDPs (despite Venezula having about 6 times the population of Norway). But in any other area you care to consider, from per-capita GDP to political stability to education to economic diversification to healthcare to corruption to age distribution to civil liberties to pollution to population growth to the HDI, they are in extremely sharp contrast in almost every way we measure nations. Politically, it’s a stable parliamentary democracy up against a polarized authoritarian-leaning republic, pretty darn far from each other. Yes, they are both resource-dependent, state-central, and redistributional nations, but they go about it in virtually opposite ways functionally, and there are dozens of such countries that would rank closely on those generic metrics.
It hard to think of two more dissimilar nations, outside of the fact that they both have oil and both coincidentally have almost identical GDPs (despite Venezula having about 6 times the population of Norway). But in any other area you care to consider, from per-capita GDP to political stability to education to economic diversification to healthcare to corruption to age distribution to civil liberties to pollution to population growth to the HDI, they are in extremely sharp contrast in almost every way we measure nations. Politically, it’s a stable parliamentary democracy up against a polarized authoritarian-leaning republic, pretty darn far from each other. Yes, they are both resource-dependent, state-central, and redistributional nations, but they go about it in virtually opposite ways functionally, and there are dozens of such countries that would rank closely on those generic metrics.