Globalization: Opportunities & Challenges
Interactive evidence maps for spatial inquiry.
Category 1
Maps of economic scale, productive structure, trade orientation, specialization, dependence, and material leverage. This category directly supports Module 1, International Relations and Interdependence, and can also support Modules 5–7 on scarcity, macroeconomics, and economic policy. It is especially useful for Strategic Activity 1, The Smart Power Playbook, country capability comparisons, and investigations of how economic resources become international influence.
Map 1
What can this country produce, finance, offer, purchase, or restrict?
Compares total economic scale with sector shares, estimated sector totals, trade orientation, GDP per person, and recent economic change. The map keeps productive specialization distinct from productive scale.
Possible additions include macroeconomic stability, trade dependence, financial exposure, labor structure, resource dependence, and unequal exchange.
Category 2
Maps of population, demographic structure, health, education, connectivity, inequality, and human capabilities. This category supports Module 1 and is central to Module 4, Human Development; it also provides evidence for Modules 8 and 9 on inequality and migration. It can be used in the Smart Power Playbook, development-profile activities, comparisons between demographic scale and social capability, and discussions of what national averages conceal.
Map 2
What population, knowledge, skills, and social capabilities can this country mobilize?
Distinguishes population scale from age structure, urbanization, Internet access, health, education, HDI, and inequality-adjusted HDI. It treats human capability as more than population size alone.
Possible additions include poverty, multidimensional deprivation, gender gaps, well-being, migration, internal inequality, and development trajectories.
Category 3
Maps of coercive resources, organized violence, conflict participation, deterrence, exposure, and security relationships. This category links Module 1 to Module 3, Conflict Theory, while also supporting Module 2 when students investigate states, armed actors, alliances, and institutions. It is useful for the Smart Power Playbook, conflict-case analysis, distinctions between capacity and use, and careful discussion of what event counts cannot establish about responsibility or success.
Map 3
What can this country defend, deter, pressure, guarantee, or support?
Combines military expenditure as a domestic economic share, an estimated expenditure total, and recent lethal interstate-event participation. Spending, event involvement, readiness, and successful influence remain analytically distinct.
Possible additions include conflict events, actor locations, dyads, civilian consequences, nonviolent campaigns, structural vulnerability, and conflict trajectories.
Category 4
Maps of states, intergovernmental organizations, cities, municipal networks, campaigns, institutions, and directed relationships. This category supports Module 1 and is central to Module 2, International Actors, with additional uses in Module 3 and Module 10, Global Citizenship. It is designed for the Smart Power Playbook, stakeholder mapping, relational inquiry, and activities that ask who acts, who sets rules, who gains access, and what realistic forms of agency remain available.
Map 4
Through whom, and through which relationships, can this country pursue international objectives?
Brings together IGO memberships, transnational municipal-network nodes, mass-resistance campaigns, curated actor relationships, and domestic institutional indicators without collapsing them into one national power score.
Possible additions include actor-specific networks, organization profiles, city diplomacy, campaign trajectories, coalition maps, corporate actors, civil society, and individual agency channels.
Documentation
These references cite the original data providers and published datasets underlying the current four maps. The maps use selected, cleaned, joined, or derived GOC tables; the original source citation should therefore be retained alongside any map-specific processing note.
World Bank. (2026). World Development Indicators [Data set]. Retrieved August 4, 2026, from https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators
United Nations Development Programme. (2025). Human Development Report 2025 data center [Data set]. https://hdr.undp.org/data-center
United Nations Development Programme. (2025). Human Development Report 2025: A matter of choice—People and possibilities in the age of AI . https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-2025
Uppsala Conflict Data Program. (2026). UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) Global (Version 26.1) [Data set]. Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University. https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/
Davies, S., Pettersson, T., & Öberg, M. (2026). Organized violence 1989–2025, and violent political protests. Journal of Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopres/xjag046
Sundberg, R., & Melander, E. (2013). Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 50(4), 523–532.
Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Knutsen, C. H., Lindberg, S. I., Teorell, J., Altman, D., Angiolillo, F., Bernhard, M., Cornell, A., Fish, M. S., Fox, L., Gastaldi, L., Gjerløw, H., Glynn, A., Good God, A., Hicken, A., Kinzelbach, K., Krusell, J., Marquardt, K. L., . . . Ziblatt, D. (2026). V-Dem Country-Year/Country-Date Dataset (Version 16) [Data set]. Varieties of Democracy Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds26
Chenoweth, E., & Shay, C. W. (2019). NAVCO 2.1 Dataset (Version 2.1) [Data set]. Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/MHOXDV
Pevehouse, J. C. W., Nordstrom, T., McManus, R. W., & Jamison, A. S. (2020). Tracking organizations in the world: The Correlates of War IGO Version 3.0 datasets. Journal of Peace Research, 57(3), 492–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319881175
Acuto, M., & Leffel, B. (2024). City networks membership dataset (Version 2) [Data set]. The University of Melbourne. https://doi.org/10.26188/21330996
OpenDataSoft. (2026). World administrative boundaries—Countries and territories [Data set]. Retrieved August 4, 2026, from https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/world-administrative-boundaries/
world-administrative-boundaries.shp
was downloaded from the OpenDataSoft layer cited above. If its metadata
identifies another publisher or release, replace that geometry citation
before publishing the MapoTECa.