[kqr]

For what it's worth, when I hear "the West" I think of what would on a global, historical scale be known as the "far west", i.e. mainly north and western Europe. (The "near west" would be the cultures just to the east of the Mediterranean, I suppose.)

I would never bunch Oceanic or Asian cultures in there.

I'm surprised to hear other people use it in a broader sense. At some point one is talking about cultures that are so different it's no longer meaningful to generalise across them.

[executive]

in political context, "the West" is referring to the concept of "Western democracies"