"Trust, don't verify" - Towards a theory of strong trust in International Relations

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Trust is an interesting phenomenon which has found little attention in the discipline of international relations. In the second stage of the research project Trust, don`t verify - Towards a theory of strong trust in International Relations we will investigate variables which support or inhibit trust building by states towards other states. In this research, we focus on the field of interstate security and go back to the conceptual and methodological toolset that was developed in the first project stage. We apply this toolset to an analysis of German foreign policy towards Russia, France and the United States. We conceptualize our dependent variable, trust at the level of nation states, as a foreign policy discourse which is characterized by a specific set of assumptions about the character of the other state. In order to capture this trusting discourse and trace its pervasiveness over time, we utilize the content analytical categories that were developed in the first stage of the project. This method allows us to trace changing levels of trust over time. We have identified several candidates for independent variables which may influence the process of trust building in different ways: sending and receiving costly signals, individual contact between decision makers, bureaucrats and the general publics from two states, learning as a result of successful interactions, and finally different stages and designs of international institutionalization. To operationalize these independent factors, we employ a combination of event data and additional qualitative properties. By the end of the project, we hope to reach a better understanding of what helps or hinders trust building by states towards other states. The project is intended as a contribution to trust building in foreign policy. From there, we should be able to refocus on interstate trust as a genuinely relational category.