The meta-geography of the open society: An Auto-CM ANN approach

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative operationalization of world-system analysis through attributional data, and makes use of an innovative Artificial Neural Network computational tool, the Auto-Contractive Map (AutoCM), to analyze the core-periphery structure of a database including five well-known, publicly available indicators that can jointly be considered an empirical proxy of an open society formulation of Western governmentality: World Competitiveness Index; Freedom of Press Index; Economic Freedom Index; Corruption Perception Index; and UNDP Human Development Index. We find clear evidence of a core-periphery structure in the data, which is largely coherent with a benchmark version obtained through an alternative computational method, the Self-Organizing Map (SOM). Moreover, we find that the resulting meta-geography of the world-system is still shaped by the colonialist geopolitics of the British Commonwealth as the key organizational backbone.