4.1 Global interactions and global power

The KOF Globalisation Index, produced by the Swiss Economic Institute (KOF), is a composite index that quantifies the intensity of a country's integration into the global system across three separate dimensions: economic, political, and social integration. Rather than relying on a single indicator such as trade volume, the index combines dozens of variables into sub-indices, which are then averaged (with de facto and de jure components weighted) into an overall globalization score, typically ranging from 0 (fully closed) to 100 (fully globalized). This allows geographers to compare countries and track how globalization changes over time, and to see which type of integration is driving a country's overall score.

Global patterns produced by the index consistently show the highest overall scores concentrated in Western Europe and North America -- regions with dense trade networks, open borders, extensive diplomatic ties, and high international migration and internet connectivity. In contrast, much of Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia record lower composite scores, reflecting weaker infrastructure for trade and communication, fewer embassies and treaty memberships, and lower rates of international migration and tourism relative to population. These patterns do not mean such regions are unaffected by globalization -- they may still be strongly shaped by external decisions (e.g. commodity prices set elsewhere) -- but rather that they are less actively integrated into the flows the index measures.

The G7 (Group of Seven) emerged in the 1970s as an informal forum bringing together the world's largest advanced economies -- the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan -- to coordinate economic policy, respond to financial crises, and manage global trade relations. As a small, invitation-only club of high-income countries (HICs), it functioned as one of the most influential centres of global economic power, despite representing only a fraction of the world's states and population.

In 1997, Russia was formally invited to join the group, transforming it into the G8. This inclusion reflected the post-Cold War shift in global geopolitics: following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Western powers sought to integrate Russia into liberal, market-based international institutions, encouraging its transition to a capitalist economy and anchoring it within Western-aligned diplomatic and economic structures. Russia's vast energy resources, nuclear capability, and geopolitical weight made it a country whose cooperation -- rather than exclusion -- was seen as valuable for global stability and economic coordination.

The G8's expanded membership allowed the forum to address a broader set of global issues, including energy security (given Russia's role as a major oil and gas exporter), nuclear non-proliferation, and East-West political relations. However, the G8 retained the same core criticism levelled at the original G7: it remained a small, self-selecting club of powerful states, excluding rising economies and low-income countries (LICs) from decision-making that affected the entire global economy. This limited inclusivity is part of why broader forums such as the G20 later gained prominence, incorporating emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.

Russia's membership was ultimately suspended in 2014, following its annexation of Crimea, and the group reverted to being the G7. This reversal illustrates that membership of global forums is not fixed -- it is a reflection of prevailing political relationships, and can be extended or withdrawn as a mechanism of diplomatic pressure and global power realignment.

The Group of Eight (G8) emerged from the G6/G7 forums of the 1970s as an informal gathering of the world's wealthiest, most industrialized states -- originally France, the USA, the UK, West Germany, Japan, and Italy, later joined by Canada and (until its suspension in 2014) Russia. It has no permanent secretariat, no binding treaty, and no formal voting procedure; decisions are reached by consensus among heads of government at annual summits. This informality was originally a strength, allowing rapid coordination on issues such as exchange rates, oil shocks, and financial crises. However, it is also the source of the G8's central weakness: membership was never opened to a wider, more representative set of states, even as the global economy shifted dramatically over the following decades.

By the early 2000s, the G8's exclusivity had become difficult to justify. China, India, Brazil, and other large emerging economies had grown into major drivers of global trade and production, yet none held a seat. Sub-Saharan Africa, home to over a billion people, had no permanent representative at all. Critics argued that a body making decisions with global consequences -- on trade rules, debt relief, and financial stability -- lacked the legitimacy to do so when it represented barely 14% of the world's population and excluded entire regions from the table.

The G20, formed in 1999 and elevated to leader-level summits after the 2008 financial crisis, was created explicitly to address this legitimacy gap by adding major emerging economies to the conversation. Its inclusion of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa reflects a more accurate picture of where global economic weight actually sits in the twenty-first century. Yet the G20 is not a solution to unequal representation so much as a partial correction: it still excludes the great majority of the world's states, particularly small and low-income countries, whose economic and environmental interests (e.g. vulnerability to climate hazards, debt burdens) are frequently discussed by G20 members without those countries having a seat of their own.

The AT Kearney Global Cities Index is a globalization index that ranks the world's major cities according to their degree of global connectivity, rather than ranking entire countries. It recognizes that globalization does not affect nations evenly -- instead, it concentrates in specific urban nodes that act as command centres for the global economy. These global cities (such as London, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong) function as control points where multinational corporations, financial institutions, and international organizations cluster, generating flows of capital, people, and information that radiate outward through global networks.

The index scores cities across several dimensions, with three of the most significant being business activity, human capital, and information exchange. Together these dimensions capture how deeply a city is embedded in global economic and informational networks, distinguishing it from indices that measure globalization only at the national scale (e.g. the KOF Globalization Index) or that measure general wellbeing (e.g. the HDI).