Building a composite indicator is not an easy task. The Elcano Global Presence Index has gone through two rounds of evaluations with the JRC-COIN team in Ispra (Italy). We write about three things that we thought we would never learn from a statistician (or from a group of statisticians).
With its current seat on the Human Rights Council (2018-20), Spain should strive to continue and revitalise its foreign policy in respect to reinforcing both the UN and multilateralism.
If the EU were a single country, its global presence would be almost as large as that of the US.
The G20 has different priorities: the future of work in the digital age, sustainable infrastructure and food security, with the possible addition of the fight against corruption. They are issues that concern Argentina especially, and virtually all the others, if not all.
Shop window, megaphone and venue for discreet meetings: Davos is all these things. The main participants at the most recent World Economic Forum were the major states.
Spain maintains its 12th position in the Elcano Global Presence Index, although it has lost some measure of global presence in all of its dimensions (as have the other countries of the region).
The Elcano Global Presence Index is not normative. We would probably not reach a consensus on which forms of presence are positive and which are negative.
The field of business and human rights has grown exponentially over the past 20 years and is no longer ignored by any serious business.
The Elcano Global Presence Index results show the co-dependence of the United Kingdom and Spain particularly in the economic and soft dimensions.
Is it possible a global governance without the US. Can the others continue managing the world without its collaboration and can the US act as it pleases?
Almost 500 years since Juan Sebastián Elcano completed the first circumnavigation of the world and a vast empire subsequently came into being, Spain has re-built a substantial but very different global presence.