International relations is an important aspect in the development of an economy and of a region. It provides economies opportunities to work together to address economic, social, political, environmental, and security issues. It also allows sharing of information, technology, and best practices to help economies progress together. Such cooperation is realized through participation and commitments in regional blocs, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Exploring the patterns of such cooperation provides an understanding of how APEC has evolved. It also helps APEC identify the course that it may take in the next decades. The quality of cooperation may also reveal how member-economies have fared so far in their participation, as well as their economic or political stance on certain issues. To do such analysis, however, it must be noted that there are pieces of information that cannot be easily discerned by quantitatively analyzing available structured data. Analyzing cooperation may require a different type of methodology. This paper, therefore, explores the concepts and potential uses of content analysis in understanding international cooperation.
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