GaWC Data Set 17

Go to: [Data Set index]

International Organizations: Activities Matrix

P.J. Taylor, R. Lang and T. Gravitt

The data collection method was based upon that used for GaWC Data Set 11.

Using the Yearbook of International Organizations (2001-02) four subject categories were chosen: Environment, Development, Human Rights and Humanitarian. These were selected as defining ‘social movement' related organizations. A non-systematic selection of 200 international organizations from each category was initially made. These 800 were inspected for the geographical scope of their offices. To qualify as ‘global international organization', they had to have offices in at least three continents. 86 were found to fit the criterion and their web sites were scrutinised for information on the role and functions of their offices. Insufficient information was available for 12 international organizations and these were eliminated: the remaining 74 organizations were selected for study.

International organization offices were scored in terms of their organizational scope: international headquarters score 4, regional offices score 3, national offices score 2, and ‘sub-state' offices score 1. The resulting ‘activity values' covered offices in 603 cities and towns across the world.

Most of the 603 locations had minimal international organization presence thus creating a very sparse matrix. To eliminated minor locations, the scores for each city and town were summed, and all places with sums less than 5 were eliminated. Obviously such places have just one or two minor offices and can be considered unimportant for defining the international organization city network. This left a total of 178 cities.

The final product is an array of activity values for 74 international organizations in 178 cities.

Download Data Set: [Excel ]

As per our data protocol, the following acknowledgement should accompany any public use of the data:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The data were produced by P.J. Taylor, R. Lang and T. Gravitt and constitute Data Set 17 of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Research Network (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/) publication of inter-city data.