CONNECT: Connections and Levels of Influence of Treaty Secretariats in International Environmental and Disability Policy over Time

《国际条约秘书处影响力评价》力求系统地分析国际条约秘书处长期以来的影响力。该项目采用混合方法研究设计，旨在调查两个研究问题：国际条约秘书处如何随着时间的推移和跨问题领域对多边谈判的进程、对话和结果施加影响？秘书处在具体问题信息流动中的社会背景在多大程度上解释了这种影响？尽管国际条约秘书处的知名度越来越高，而且关于其在全球政治中的作用的研究也越来越多（Bauer，2006年; Biermann & Siebenhüner，2009年; Busch，2014年; Jinnah，2014年），但其对全球政策产出的影响力的来源和因果机制尚未得到系统研究。该项目将使用社会网络理论，并借鉴定量社会网络分析和定性话语分析的技术，以促进对秘书处在两个不同政策领域的影响力的原因和机制的理解。此外，环境条约秘书处将扩大以前关于环境条约秘书处作用的研究结果，包括第二个政策领域，即残疾政策领域的条约秘书处。总而言之，ECOECT追求四个密切相关的中心目标，并解决有关经验，方法和理论的最新状态的基本进展：1。从经验上重新评估国际条约秘书处在一段时间内的影响力。比较条约秘书处在不同领域的影响（《气候公约》、《生物多样性公约》、《残疾人权利公约》），联合收割机将SNA的定量结果与发展议程收集的定性见解相结合，以确定秘书处影响力的主要决定因素;利用社会网络理论，从理论上重新构想国际条约秘书处的社会嵌入性与其对政策产出的影响之间的关系。该项目旨在通过建立我们第一阶段项目（即我们的项目ENVIPA）的成果和当前的技术水平，为这些研究目标做出贡献。

CONNECT seeks to systematically analyze the influence of international treaty secretariats over time. Using a mixed methods research design, the project aims to investigate two research questions:How do international treaty secretariats exert influence on the processes, discourses and outcomes of multilateral negotiations over time and across issue areas? To what extent does the secretariats' social embeddedness in issue-specific information flows explain this influence?Despite the increasing visibility of international treaty secretariats and against a growing body of research on their role in global politics (Bauer, 2006; Biermann & Siebenhüner, 2009; Busch, 2014; Jinnah, 2014), the sources and causal mechanisms of their influence on global policy outputs have not been systematically studied over time and across policy areas. CONNECT will contribute to this research gap by combining theories and methods in novel ways: The project will use social network theory and draw on techniques of quantitative Social Network Analysis (SNA) and qualitative Discourse Analysis (DA) in order to advance the understanding of the causes and mechanisms underlying secretariats' influence in two different policy fields. Additionally, CONNECT will extend previous findings on the role of environmental treaty secretariats by including a treaty secretariat of a second policy field, namely that of disability policy. Altogether, CONNECT pursues four central objectives that are closely interlinked and address essential advances concerning the empirical, methodological and theoretical state of the art:1. to empirically reassess the influence of international treaty secretariats over time,2. to compare the influence of treaty secretariats in different areas (UNFCCC, CBD, CRPD), 3. to combine findings from quantitative SNA with qualitative insights gathered with DA in order to identify central determinants of secretariat influence, and4. to theoretically reconceptualize the relationship between the social embeddedness of international treaty secretariats and their influence on policy outputs using social network theory.The project seeks to contribute to these research aims by building upon results of our first project phase (namely our project ENVIPA) and the current state of the art.