Methodology
The ratings
Every figure on the site comes from one table of ratings. Each row rates one side of one relationship on one dimension: a nation, a partner, the dimension and a score. The table has 131,464 rows. Scores run from 1.70 to 6.00, in tenths of a point.
The table calls each score an average, but does not record what it averages: how many ratings stand behind each figure, who or what gave them, the scale they were given on, or when. Until that is written down, the scores are best read against one another, within a dimension and within a panel, rather than as absolute measures.
Four dimensions
Each side of each relationship is rated on all four. Their names are those given with the data; what each means is read from the names and from where the scores fall.
| Dimension | Code | Leading, mean | Wider, mean | Gap between sides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relationship Intensity | rel_int | 3.47 | 2.78 | 0.22 |
| Relationship Momentum | rel_mom | 4.19 | 3.84 | 0.19 |
| Structural Dependence | str_dep | 3.25 | 2.99 | 0.25 |
| Cooperative Orientation | cop-ori | 4.51 | 3.99 | 0.13 |
The code cop-ori was labelled Co-publication Orientation in one place in the first version of this site and Cooperative Orientation in another. The scores read as cooperation: China and Pakistan rate their relationship highest, and China and Taiwan, and Iran and Israel, lowest. The site calls it Cooperative Orientation. The first version also named Structural Dependence Strategic Dependence in one place; the site keeps Structural.
Two panels
The ratings fall into two panels that never meet. The 50 leading nations (United States, China, India, Brazil, Nigeria and the rest) are each rated against every other: 1,225 pairs. The 168 nations and territories of the wider world (Kenya, Bangladesh, Denmark, Peru, Fiji and the rest) are each rated against every other: 14,028 pairs. No nation of one panel is rated against a nation of the other, so there is no rating of India and Nepal, of the United States and Cuba, or of China and Laos.
Two things follow. A nation’s mean is over different partners in each panel, so a mean in one panel cannot be set beside a mean in the other; and a nation is ranked only against its own panel. The site keeps the panels apart throughout: the tables, the networks, the communities and the Index are drawn for each alone. The site finds the panels from the ratings themselves; if a later table joins them, the build stops and says so, so the pages can be redrawn for it.
Both sides
A rating is one nation’s side of a relationship, and the two sides often differ. The site keeps them apart. Where it gives one figure for a relationship, “both”, it is the mean of the two sides; the gap is the first side less the second. Of the 15,253 pairs, 25 are rated from one side only.
9,540 ratings appear twice in the table, most with slightly different scores. Each pair of duplicates is averaged into one, leaving 121,924 ratings: 30,481 sides of 15,253 relationships, each rated on all four dimensions.
Communities
Within a panel every pair is rated, so a network of every relationship is one dense mass. Communities are found on the strongest 30 per cent of each panel’s relationships by intensity, both sides together, with each nation’s own strongest relationship kept so that none is left out. Each link counts by how far it stands above that cut. The groups are found by the Louvain method with a fixed seed, so they are the same on every build, and each is named after its hub: the member with the most weight of strong relationships inside it. They are a reading of the ratings, not alliances.
The Index
The Index ranks each nation within its panel by the mean of its relationships on the dimension chosen, both sides together. Every partner counts alike, so a nation close to a few and distant from many ranks below one moderately close to all. It is a first, simple reading, and is marked provisional.
The networks
The networks are drawn by GINC’s Network Explorer. Each nation is a dot, sized by its mean on the dimension and coloured by region. Each nation keeps its eight strongest links and the strongest tenth of all links is added; the layout pulls strongly linked nations together. Nearness means a closer relationship, but the distance between clusters is widened to make them legible and is not a measure.
Names and regions
Nations are given by their ISO three-letter codes. The site gives each a common name and one of five regions, as GINC’s trade site does, so a region has the same colour on both. Two codes are not ISO’s: CHI, the Channel Islands, and XKX, Kosovo.