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It's a small world, and globalization is making it smaller, even in the face of conflict and chaos. For the sixth year, FOREIGN POLICY, in collaboration with A. T. Kearnej, sorts out globalization's winners and losers. Find out which countries come out on top and which ones are falling behind.
* POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
Including participation in treaties, organizations, and peacekeeping
* TECHNOLOGICAL CONNECTIVITY
Including number of internet users, hosts, and secure servers
* PERSONAL CONTACT
Including telephone, travel, and remittances
* ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
Including international trade and foreign direct investment
The Global Top 20
The world's most integrated countries come in very different shapes and sizes, and they have followed very different paths to globalization.
Recent months have offered plenty of fresh evidence that the world is falling apart. Conflict in the Middle East, a nuclear stalemate between Iran and the West, perilously high oil prices, and the collapse of the Doha round of global trade talks all suggest a world that has gone off the rails. In this volatile environment, isolation has a powerful appeal. Why should states bind themselves more firmly to such an unstable political and economic order? Why would they willingly court greater reliance on foreign producers and politicians? Why, in short, should they want globalization?
Part of the answer is that the daily headlines that report each new crisis or conflict miss the gradual but often profound currents of global integration that lurk beneath the surface. Fractious though the world may be, globalization still has much to offer, and a momentum of its own. The annual A.T. Kearney/FOREIGN POLICY Globalization Index examines the underlying international trends that reveal whether the world's leading nations are becoming more or less globally connected.
This year's index looks at data from 2004, which was a banner year for global political integration, at least on paper. In May of that year, the European Union (EU) took on 10 new members. A month later, European leaders drafted a constitution to cement the union's remarkable expansion. For its part, the NATO alliance added seven brandnew members. And on the other side of the globe, Cambodia and Nepal joined the World Trade Organization. In the corporate world, too, former bitter rivals joined hands. After months of legal wrangling,...