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According to Wiki:

Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country in lieu of direct military control (imperialism) or indirect political control (hegemony).

Is there an organization which tracks down this influence and publishes a map or some other form of statistics on which developing countries are influenced by which developed countries? E.g. the map would show that the US is the biggest actor in Iraq, while France is the biggest in Mali.

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    You don't specify what time periods. I did a simple search and found lots of graphs on this matter.
    – LegendofLegends
    Nov 20, 2017 at 1:13
  • @legendoflegends 2017 or as recent as possible
    – JonathanReez
    Nov 20, 2017 at 1:21
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    Interesting resource, but I suspect it wouldn’t be very clear-cut.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Nov 20, 2017 at 2:44
  • Nice question. I am not sure of the examples, though. The US sure have a military influence on Iraq, and France on Mali, but according to your definition, the question would be answered by economics graphs (for the capitalism aspects, import/exports, financial transfers, ...). Unless military interventions also count.
    – user5751924
    Nov 20, 2017 at 10:36
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    For the most part it is just a map of the colonial era control over different parts of the globe. For example, this one captures most of the relationships: timemaps.com/history/world-1914ad
    – ohwilleke ♦
    Nov 21, 2017 at 6:00

2 Answers 2

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There two big problems with your question. First is measuring foreign influence, especially softer factors. The second thing is seriously problematic (with hint of ideological bent) definition of neocolonialism.

1.1) Neocolonialism, cheap version - any linguistic map, showing which foreign languages are known in each country.

1.2) Neocolonialism, reasonable version - some kind of aggregate metric including not only language, but also:

  • FDI
  • trade volume
  • foreign aid
  • correlation concerning voting in the United Nations
  • foreign debt

2) Definition problems:

"using capitalism" - it is already problematic, whether we speak about "capitalism" in case of politicians negotiating a contract, gov owned companies implementing it and banks are financing it based on gov guarantees. Moreover, what about Soviet Union meddling in similar way, except it is hard to accuse them of being "capitalist"?

"developing countries are influenced by which developed countries"

Let's analyse relationships between Russian influence on Latvia. Occupied? Checked. Colonized? Checked. Local population still know language of colonizer? Checked. Former colonial power is able to use its influence to extract rent or strangle economy? Checked (natural gas). Significant colonizer population left behind? Checked. Everything fits perfectly... except that according to HDI (Human Development Index) Latvia is slightly more developed.

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You're not going to be able to find statistics on soft power such as the "cultural imperialism" you mentioned as there's no defined way to measure such a thing, though in many cases the original colonizer of a now free country still retains some sort of ties and influence over the region - as you stated with Mali.

The best indication of such that you're going to find is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in a country. There's a great source to find this for OECD countries, but I've been unable to find a consistent source for all countries worldwide. The information is out there though, for example here is an FDI breakdown for Iraq which shows that the US is actually second place to the UAE in FDI inflows to the nation.

China has been stirring up quite a bit of debate on the FDI-Neocolonialism topic in recent years, I would recommend reading on that if you're interested.

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