ISI
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Methodology

How the International Sovereignty Index is computed.

1. Objective

The ISI measures the concentration of external dependencies for each EU-27 member state across a set of strategic axes. It does not assess quality, risk, or desirability of those dependencies — only their structural concentration.

2. Scoring Framework

Each axis produces a score on the [0, 1] interval using a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) framework:

  • 0.00 — Perfectly diversified (equal shares among infinite partners)
  • 1.00 — Total concentration (100% from a single source)

RangeClassification
≥ 0.50Highly Concentrated
0.25 – 0.49Moderately Concentrated
0.15 – 0.24Mildly Concentrated
< 0.15Unconcentrated

3. Composite Aggregation

The ISI composite is computed as an unweighted arithmetic mean of all available axis scores for each country:

ISI_composite = (1/N) × Σ axis_score_i, for i = 1 to N

No domain-weighting is applied. This is a deliberate design choice — the index does not presume which axes matter more. Users should consider axis-level scores when domain-specific analysis is needed.

4. Data Pipeline

All data is pre-materialized by the backend export pipeline (export_isi_backend_v01.py) and served as static JSON artifacts by the API layer (isi_api_v01.py). The frontend performs zero computation — it is a pure rendering layer.

5. Axis-Level Documentation

Each axis has its own measurement definition, data sources, inclusion/exclusion scope, and known limitations. These are documented on the individual axis detail pages, which are driven entirely by the backend axis registry.