Multidimensional Similarities at a Global Scale: An Approach to Mapping Open Society Orientations Massimo Buscema 1,2 • Pier Luigi Sacco 3 • Guido Ferilli 3 Accepted: 12 August 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 Abstract This paper analyzes the global geography of open society orientations in the sense of Karl Popper’s notion of open society, by means of a database consisting of five common, public and widely used indicators such as UNDP’s Human Development Index, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index, Reporters Sans Frontie `res’ Press Freedom Index, and Trans- parency International’s Corruption Perception Index. We carry out a cluster analysis based on the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) technique, and find that the geography of open society orientation organizes globally into four main clusters with distinctive socio-economic characteristics. We discuss the implications of the clusterization and find that it provides interesting insight also as to the post-2008 response of countries to the global financial crisis. Keywords Human Development Index Á Global Competitiveness Index Á Economic Freedom Index Á Press Freedom Index Á Corruption Perception Index Á Self-organizing map Á Clusters Á Open society orientation & Pier Luigi Sacco pierluigi.sacco@iulm.it Massimo Buscema m.buscema@semeion.it Guido Ferilli guido.ferilli@iulm.it 1 Semeion Research Center, Via Sersale 117, 00128 Rome, Italy 2 Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Colorado, 1250 14th Street, Denver, CO 80217-3364, USA 3 IULM University, Via Carlo Bo, 1, 20143 Milan, Italy 123 Soc Indic Res DOI 10.1007/s11205-015-1077-4