The text that follows is intended to help you to quickly understand the content and purpose of the GEO-POWER-EU Interdependence Database, and to see how it can be useful. The Interdependence Database has been created as a part of the GEO-POWER-EU project, funded by the European Union. The database brings together information that reflects how nine countries in the Western Balkans (WB6) and Eastern Partnership (EaP3) regions are linked to five major external actors: the EU, the US, China, Russia and Turkey. It covers political, economic, security and societal relations, and shows how these have evolved from 2007 to 2024. The database maps the historical evolution of linkages, with a focus on the most recent developments. It explores bilateral relations between nine countries and external actors, but does not include indicators that characterise individual countries or relations between/among individual Western Balkans and Eastern Partnership countries.
There are four dimensions that you can explore: political, security, economic and societal. For each, a variety of indicators have been researched — including agreements and treaties, trade flows, military cooperation, cultural ties, and media presence. You can filter the data by indicator, country, year and external actor (if applicable) and browse what’s available. You begin by selecting a dimension (Topic) and a specific indicator you want to explore. Then, if the indicator is a time series, you can choose the focus of your analysis: examining either how a selected country relates to various external actors (Focus: Country), or how a selected external actor engages with some of the nine countries (Focus: External actors). Based on your chosen focus, you can then select one or multiple external actors for a selected country, or one or multiple countries for a selected external actor to dive deeper into their relationship. The nine countries included in the mapping of interdependence, and referred to as ‘countries’ are six Western Balkans (WB6) countries: Albania (AL), Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA), Montenegro (ME), North Macedonia (MK), Serbia (RS), and Kosovo (XK); and three Eastern Partnership countries (EaP3): Georgia (GE), Moldova (MD) and Ukraine (UA). External actors include the EU, the US (US), China (CN), Russia (RU) and Turkey (TR).
After making your selection, you can trace how relationships evolve over time (tab Trends). For some indicators, depending on the available data, you can rank external actors or countries (tab Ranking), and compare their positions at two selected points in time (tab Comparison). For each selected visualisation type, you can look at the exact values used in the most recent plot (tab Comparison).
For all indicators, the definition is available in a dedicated box (Definition) to the right of the plot. Detailed sources along with relevant documentation gathered during the project by indicator or even by data entry (if available) represent an integrated part of the database and are available for each indicator and selected year in the dedicated tab Data Sources and Metadata, which is highlighted in yellow.
Disclaimer: Data in the Interdependence Database have been collected by partners from various public sources and through requests, and therefore may not provide comprehensive and complete coverage for individual indicators.
Suggested citation: GEO-POWER-EU (2025). Interdependence Database. https://geo-power.eu/research-output/database (accessed: date)
We’ve outlined a few examples, based on typical users and their goals.
If you're a journalist...
You might be looking for data to back up a story or spot trends worth exploring. This database can help you add solid evidence to your reporting.
Examples:
If you're a policy adviser...
You might need a regional snapshot or want to track influence dynamics over time for a country of interest. The dashboard lets you compare across countries, actors and indicators.
Examples:
If you're a researcher
You might want access to the dataset to run your own analysis or work across various indicators.
Example:
The GEO-POWER-EU Interdependence Database has been created as a part of the GEO-POWER-EU project funded by the European Union. It maps how nine countries in the Western Balkans (WB6) and Eastern Partnership (EaP3) regions are linked to five major external actors: the EU, the US, China, Russia and Turkey. It covers political, economic, security and societal relations, and shows how these have evolved from 2007 to 2024. The Interdependence Database shows the evolution of linkages, with a focus on the most recent developments. The database explores bilateral relations between nine countries and external actors. It does not include indicators that characterise individual countries or relations between/among individual WB6 and EaP3 countries.
The GEO-POWER EU Interdependence Database understands ‘interdependence’ as relationships evident from tangible links such as:
institutional arrangements at the level of states (agreements, contracts, membership of intergovernmental organisations) and sub-state actors close to power (political parties, business associations, diaspora, civil society);
practices (e.g. aligned voting in intergovernmental fora, joint exercises or deployments);
exchanges (export-import, people, political meetings).
Linkages are a prerequisite for the exercise of influence. However, their establishment does not guarantee that influence.
The nine countries included in the mapping of interdependence, and referred to as ‘countries’ are the following:
six Western Balkans (WB6) countries: Albania (AL), Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA), Montenegro (ME), North Macedonia (MK), Serbia (RS), Kosovo (XK);
three Eastern Partnership countries (EaP3): Georgia (GE), Moldova (MD), Ukraine (UA).
External actors include the EU, the US (US), China (CN), Russia (RU), Turkey (TR).
The data have been collected for the EU as a whole (or a total of 27 member states according to the current country composition), with exceptions mentioned in the notes related to individual indicators.
The data for Ukraine have been presented without the territories occupied by Russia. Historical data on Russia have been collected to capture its influence aspirations prior to the occupation of Crimea and the war. This does not suggest a position with regard to the territorial implications of the war, but reflects the reality of data collection.
The Interdependence Database covers annual data for 2007-2024, conditional on data availability, with a greater focus on the most recent three to five years. Data collection on an annual basis enables users to identify patterns and highlight particular years when linkages intensified.
The database will be updated annually with information about new linkages under examination until the end of the project. The next release is expected in May 2026.
The consortium members of the GEO-POWER-EU project collected data from available public sources, including official sources such as websites of parliaments, relevant ministries and national statistics offices, as well as by searching other public sources and requesting information from responsible authorities. The data were supplemented with information already provided in various specialised international databases. Detailed source and methodology documentation by indicator or even by data entry (if available) represent an integrated part of the online database under https://geo-power.eu/research-output/database and can be found for each indicator, in the Data sources and metadata section.
wiiw – The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies – overall coordination of the Interdependence Database, data collection from international data sources;
Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe (CAS SEE), University of Rijeka (UniRi) – coordination;
Institute for Democracy ‘Societas Civilis’ – Skopje – Albania, North Macedonia;
Democratization Policy Council (DPC) – Bosnia and Herzegovina;
University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science (FPN) – Montenegro, Serbia;
VE Insight – Kosovo, assistance in data collection on Albania;
Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS) – Georgia;
Institute for Development and Social Initiatives (IDIS) ‘Viitorul’ – Moldova;
Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University (ONU) – Ukraine.
As data in the Interdependence Database have been collected from various public sources and through requests, they may not provide comprehensive and complete coverage for individual indicators.
Building on the typologies of Levitsky & Way (2010) and Bieber & Tzifakis (2020), for analytical reasons relationships have been examined within four groups of linkages: political, security, economic and societal. Below, you will find more detailed description of linkages explored under those four groups.
Political: 1.1. political agreements, 1.2. membership/participation in multilateral initiatives and international organisations in which certain external actors exert heavy influence, 1.3. frequency of high-level meetings/contacts (e.g. at government/head of state level), 1.4. diplomatic missions and their size, 1.5. alignment with EU foreign policy declarations, 1.6. agreements/cooperation at political party level (i.e. party-to-party relations).
Security: Security cooperation includes bilateral and multilateral cooperation beyond military relations: 2.1. agreements at the level of states and state security agencies that are authorised to use force and surveillance (e.g. armed forces, police etc.), and institutionalised cooperation in response to specific security threats (e.g. cybersecurity, organised crime), 2.2. arms and security equipment transfers (procurement, donations), 2.3. security practices (e.g. joint exercises, deployments) or transnational repression (extraditions of individuals at serious risk of being subjected to the death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment).
Economic: 3.1. economic agreements (e.g. free trade, investment agreement, visa-free travel as a proxy for people mobility), 3.2. flows of trade in goods and services, investments, development assistance, remittances; bilateral external debt, 3.3. business association links.
Societal: 4.1. flows of information via media (e.g. foreign media broadcasting in local languages; agreements between foreign media and local media to reproduce news), 4.2. cultural programme ties (cultural institutes and their density, scholarships etc.), 4.3. people-to-people contacts (bilateral migration, diaspora links, student exchanges), 4.4. civil society ties (civil society organisations), 4.5. opinion polls.
Certain types of interdependence may be conditioned not just through the relations in that domain, but also through dependencies created in other spheres. For example, security relations are also affected by political and economic arrangements, energy dependence etc. However, for reasons of clarity, the same indicator has not been included under two dimensions of interdependence (e.g. visa-free travel arrangements as both an indicator of political and economic relationships).
GEO-POWER-EU (2025). Interdependence Database. https://geo-power.eu/research-output/database (accessed: date)
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