Dataset 17

International Organisations: Activities Matrix

Peter J. Taylor, Robert E. Lang and Troy Gravitt


The data collection method was based upon that used for GaWC Dataset 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 organisations. A non-systematic selection of 200 international organisations from each category was initially made. These 800 were inspected for the geographical scope of their offices. To qualify as ‘global international organisation’, they had to have offices in at least three continents. 86 were found to fit the criterion and their websites were scrutinised for information on the role and functions of their offices. Insufficient information was available for 12 international organisations and these were eliminated: the remaining 74 organisations were selected for study.

International organisation offices were scored in terms of their organisational 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 organisation 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 organisation city network. This left a total of 178 cities.

DescriptionFiles
Activity matrix of 74 international organisations in 178 citiesXLS

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

Acknowledgement: The data were produced by Peter J. Taylor, Robert E. Lang and Troy Gravitt and constitute Dataset 17 of the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research network (https://gawc.lboro.ac.uk/) publication of inter-city data.