The answers to semantic questions, when they exist, may not be ultimate or necessary or fundamental or even important, but they are still real.
Language is a tool for communication. Daniel_Burfoot's original post was clear (and "compare Dubai with other cities" would have been misleading); while a formulation like "compare Dubai with other zones where a particular legal and administrative system applies" might be technically more correct, I don't think the difference justifies the verbosity.
Well, I suppose that depends on your point of view. For me, the US is the central example of a country, because it's the one I live in and am a citizen of.
I think we could form a reasonably uncontroversial ranking of countries by "how distinct their political subdivisions are", and the US would be close to one end of the scale (though not quite as far along as UAE). Do you disagree?
France has a lot more centralization of policy than the US does, but I'll still bet you that the municipal code of Paris is non-identical to the municipal code of Marseille. Spain's "autonomous communities" definitely have differing laws from each other: Catalonia, for example, has banned bullfighting, which would be unthinkable in other parts of the country. Do you doubt that one could multiply such examples at will?
A typical country has some minor variations within the country (though perhaps not if we restrict ourselves to law rather than administrative codes), sure. But I think the scale of variation seen in the US is very much atypical.
[The] original post was clear (and "compare Dubai with other cities" would have been misleading)
Here is more of the context:
I was thinking of Yemen, Oman and Somalia...I've heard good things about Dubai, but not enough to do a serious comparison between it and other countries
In the above, "the UAE" should replace "Dubai". If the UAE is so heterogeneous a country that greater specificity is required, then it should read "the UAE (particularly Dubai)", just as someone might write "the USA (particularly New ...
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