Measuring interdependence

Abstract

Recent research on international interdependence has led to increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of the phenomenon. However, it has not been very successful in measuring interdependence, nor in testing theories about it. Although the theoretical message of most interdependence research is that interdependence is multinational or systemic, empirical operationalization has tended to concentrate on looking for interdependence (or integration, or community) as a relationship between a pair of nation states, rather than as an international pattern of behavior among an entire set of countries. Complicating these empirical analyses is their lack of operationally defined end states. In general, the approach has been to look for changes or differences in behavior, rather than for absolute levels of interdependence or integration. This is, at best, only an indirect test of the validity of a theory, regardless of how well or how badly it enables one to examine and compare one set of nations with another or the same set over time.