Globalization and Transnationality Indexes

Globalization Indexes

One of the first efforts to compile a globalization index was developed by A. T. Kearney, a consulting firm, and Foreign Policy magazine. The Kearney/FP Globalization Index, first published in 2000, derives its scores from a set of 11 to 14 (depending on the year) variables under four key components: (1) economic integration (e.g., trade and foreign investment); (2) personal contacts (e.g., tourism and international telephone calls); (3) technological connectivity (e.g., Internet users and hosts); and (4) political engagement (e.g., membership in international organizations). Although modifications were made over the years, the Index has not been published since 2007, when the Kearney/FP index covered 72 countries.

The other main globalization index, first published in 2002, is the KOF Index of Globalization, constructed by Axel Dreherand and other researchers at the Zürich Institute of Technology (ETHZ). The KOF Index starts from the assumption that globalization is a process of creating networks among actors at multicontinental distances, facilitated by flows of people, information, ideas, capital, and goods. It groups these networks and flows into three dimensions of globalization—economic, [Page 766]political, and social—measured by 23 variables. The KOF Index includes many of the same basic variables as the Kearney/FP Index, but it adds more information on personal contacts (e.g., number of international letters sent); proxies for cultural convergence (e.g., number of McDonald's and IKEA outlets); and information on barriers to trade and capital flows. The KOF Index continues to be published annually.

Other efforts tend to build on these two. For example, Ben Lockwood and Michela Redoano at the University of Warwick's Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR) introduced the CSGR Globalisation Index, which draws on the work of the Kearney/FP index. It includes some methodological innovations such as optimal statistical weighting and controlling for fixed country geographical characteristics and uses 16 variables to construct three subindices on economic, social, and political globalization. The index website includes data during the period from 1982 to 2004, but it does not seem to have been updated since. Another variation was proposed by researchers within the TransEurope Research Network. Their apparently one-off effort, using data on 97 countries during the period 1970–2002, added a set of cultural globalization variables relating to the “logic of expansion” (e.g., urban population and high-technology exports) and to values and standards (e.g., the Freedom House Index and public spending on education).

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