Clustering the states of the world by political indicators

Abstract

The article presents the experience of clustering the states of the world, based on political indicators. Ten indicators were selected for analysis, divided into foreign and domestic political ones and including: the institutional foundations of democracy, turnout in elections, the representation of women in national parliaments, the number of NGOs, the share of state votes in the IMF, the number of diplomatic missions; the strength of the passport, the index of perception of corruption, the conflict potential of the state and military spending. With the help of geographic and geopolitical matrices of the neighborhood, a spatial econometric analysis was carried out, and using the method of geographic average and the Geary index, clustering of the states of the world was carried out. Based on the results of the analysis, we can say that the geopolitical neighborhood matrix allows more accurate clustering of the states of the world according to political indicators by taking into account the context. As for the clustering method in general, with its help it was possible not only to visualize the various parameters displayed on the cartogram of the world, but also to fix the prerequisites for integration processes, cleavages between groups of states, development trends of a particular cluster of states, etc.