Trust in International Relations - a meaningful driver of EU external relations with MENA countries in security policy domains?

国际关系中的信任——安全政策领域欧盟与中东和北非国家对外关系的重要推动力？

• 批准号: 1917509
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: King's College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1917509
• 关键词: Trust; International; Relations; meaningful; driver

The concept of 'trust' has recently gained traction among scholars interested in cooperative relations between states, though studies remain in their relative infancy in terms of adequate theorising and conceptualisation (Hoffman, 2006; Brugger, 2015). It is the premise of the proposed research - by way of further developing the concept of 'trust' within an IR perspective - that such an approach would not only serve to put 'the IR back into EU studies' theoretically, but also offer a new avenue for exploring questions of EU/MENA security cooperation empirically. The proposed research question for this project is thus: in what way and to what extent does 'trust' affect security relations between the EU and MENA countries?One key gap in the current literature is the lack of IR trust studies focused specifically on the EU. However, when concluding my own prior masters research on EU/MENA relations following the Arab Spring; the adoption of a critical security governance approach elucidating more nebulous drivers of cooperation pointed to the probable significance of more tangential relational factors between actors such as trust, as key, underlying mechanisms for the development, conceptualisation and implementation of EU/MENA security policies (Carss, 2016). I plan on first utilising (security) governance approaches - with their focus on the apparatuses of cooperation - as the basis upon which to reconceptualise trust for the purpose of researching EU security policies specifically.At this stage, it is unclear what such a thoroughly reimagined, 'thickly' constructed concept of trust in IR would look like - or constitute - however two points currently stand out; conceptualising trust causally; and discursively. With respect to causation, trust is complex to pinpoint empirically (Zand, 2016; 69) - with many studies failing to do so adequately (Brugger, 2015; 80) - and I therefore plan on conceptualising trust in line with broader notions of causation in IR (Kurki, 2008). 'Ontologically deep' objects (such as trust) are in this sense understood to hold explanatory worth and causal value equal to that of 'harder' variables more conventionally studied in IR by positivist-leaning scholars (i.e. military and economic factors). Establishing the causal relevance of trust as a 'variable' in its own right poses a further, related question: what kind of ontological object can trust best be understood to be in relation to interstate relations? Indeed, conceptualising trust as a specific discourse between cooperative parties - as the proposed research seeks to do - not only further injects much needed causality into the term, but also opens up the possibility of tackling questions related to the specific dynamics of trust; variances of degree, time and context etc. (Brugger, 2015).I plan to utilise a sequential exploratory approach; an initial phase of qualitative research in order to explore the various characteristics of trust in EU/MENA relations, followed by a second quantitative collection of data to better understand the dynamics trust between the EU and MENA countries. Currently, I will look at three MENA countries and three security policy domains within each. With regards to the latter, trust will be assessed in terms of democracy promotion, mobility and migration management and conflict and crisis management. Each of these domains will be researched in relation to EU-Morocco, EU-Egypt and EU-Turkey relations, cases offering three relatively dissimilar security policy EU/MENA cooperative arrangements.

“信任”的概念最近在对国家之间的合作关系感兴趣的学者中获得了关注，尽管在充分的理论化和概念化方面，研究仍处于相对初级阶段（霍夫曼，2006; Brugger，2015）。这是所提出的研究的前提-通过进一步发展的“信任”的概念，在IR的角度-这种方法不仅有助于把“IR回到欧盟研究”理论上，但也提供了一个新的途径，探索欧盟/中东和北非地区的安全合作问题的经验。因此，本项目的拟议研究问题是：在何种方式和在何种程度上“信任”影响欧盟和中东和北非国家之间的安全关系？目前文献中的一个关键空白是缺乏专门针对欧盟的IR信任研究。然而，在结束我自己之前对阿拉伯之春后欧盟/中东和北非关系的硕士研究时;通过一种关键的安全治理方法，阐明了合作的更模糊的驱动因素，指出了参与者之间更密切的关系因素的可能意义，如信任，作为欧盟/中东和北非安全政策的发展，概念化和实施的关键，基础机制（Carss，2016）。我打算先利用（安全）治理方法--其重点是合作机制--作为重新定义信任的基础，以专门研究欧盟安全政策。现阶段，尚不清楚这种彻底重新构想的、“厚厚”构建的信任概念是什么样子--或构成--但目前有两点很突出;因果地概念化信任;并且是漫无目的的。关于因果关系，信任是复杂的，难以凭经验确定（Zand，2016; 69）-许多研究未能充分做到这一点（Brugger，2015; 80）-因此，我计划根据IR中更广泛的因果关系概念来概念化信任（Kurki，2008）。在这个意义上，“本体论上的深层”对象（如信任）被理解为具有解释价值和因果价值，与实证主义学者在国际关系中更传统地研究的“更难”变量（即军事和经济因素）的解释价值和因果价值相等。建立信任的因果相关性作为一个“变量”在其本身的权利提出了一个进一步的，相关的问题：什么样的本体论的对象可以最好地理解为与国家间的关系？事实上，将信任概念化为合作各方之间的特定话语-正如拟议的研究所寻求的那样-不仅进一步为术语注入了急需的因果关系，而且还开辟了解决与信任的特定动态相关的问题的可能性;程度，时间和背景等的变化。（Brugger，2015）.我计划利用顺序探索方法;定性研究的初始阶段，以探讨欧盟/中东和北非关系中信任的各种特征，其次是第二次定量数据收集，以更好地了解欧盟和中东和北非国家之间的动态信任。目前，我将研究三个中东和北非国家和每个国家的三个安全政策领域。对于后者，将从促进民主、流动性和移民管理以及冲突和危机管理等方面评估信任。这些领域中的每一个都将研究欧盟-摩洛哥，欧盟-埃及和欧盟-土耳其的关系，案例提供三个相对不同的安全政策欧盟/中东和北非合作安排。