In preparation for the paper I’m writing for a conference in Portugal, I’ve come across some rather interesting documents. Two especially interesting ones are the “Globalization Index“* published in Foreign Policy and “Racing to the Top,” a comparison of that index with a number of other indices of governance issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
*One might dispute some of the elements of the Foreign Policy index. Notably, the elements of political engagement — country membership in international organizations, personnel and financial contributions to U.N. peacekeeping missions, international treaties ratified, and governmental transfers — are not necessary elements of globalization if understood in economic and social terms; nonetheless, such factors tend to track the others, so there’s probably little difference in rankings between their globalization index and one based on the working definition of globalization on which my paper is premised: the diminution or elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that emerges as a result.
Anyone looking for quantitative data on globalization should go to http://www.globalization-index.org/
It’s a globalization index (duh) that begins around 1970, compiled by a German economist named Axel Dreher. I stumbled across it while looking for sources for a regression-based paper on the link between globalization and human rights, and Dr. Dreher kindly agreed to let me use it for whatever I wished. It’s the only such data in existence, to my knowledge.
– Adam
Adam,
Thank you for that. That’s really an excellent find. I hope that others will be able to take advantage of it, as well.