States and Security: Border Orientation in the Modern World

边境安全是我们这个时代最重要的政策问题之一。各国如何从全球化中获益，同时保护国家空间不受不必要的影响、人员、商品和活动的影响？回答这些问题需要对一个国家的边界导向有一个明确的了解，或者国家对公众的承诺、权威和空间展示其控制其国家边界渗透条件的能力，通常是为了应对感知到的外部“威胁”的脆弱性。为了更好地理解这一概念，该项目收集了关于国际边界沿线国家存在的全球数据，确定了边界围栏和围墙，并确定了国家在国际边境口岸存在的位置和范围。该项目将通过对理解国际边境安全政策的原因和后果至关重要的几个与政策有关的见解，产生重大的更广泛的影响。通过发展边界导向的概念，私人投资机构能够更好地评估哪些因素导致和产生于社会对安全的关切，以及为什么这些因素被表示为边界上的物理障碍。所产生的数据将使人们能够全面分析不同类型的边境安全基础设施的比较效用。这里产生的位置数据的粒度将有助于对与各种边界控制相关的(有时是本地化的)正面和负面外部性的科学知识。该项目将开发必要的数据和概念工具，以评估有形边界投资是否以及如何影响各种政治和经济活动。这项研究工作以创新的国家治理空间概念为指导，私人投资机构将其称为边界导向：一个潜在的概念，利用一个国家对公众的承诺、权威和空间展示其控制其国家边界渗透条款的能力，通常是为了应对感知到的外部威胁的脆弱性。在经验上，这项研究通过收集关于边境沿线国家存在的原始信息，建立在这一概念的基础上。该项目的智力优势集中在其主要交付成果：两项旨在更好地理解和衡量边界方向的数据收集工作。第一个是一个数据库，记录了1990-2018年间世界上每个过境点的确切位置。在每个地点，将收集卫星图像，以推断各州试图在这些边境口岸过滤货物和人员流动的程度。第二项努力将利用国际边界墙的现有数据，尽可能准确地在2018年之前在地理空间和时间上定位墙和栅栏段。这些数据对于了解不断变化的交通、交易和结算模式至关重要，因此将提供一种在各种社会科学学科中积累边境政治知识的手段。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Border security is one of the most significant policy issues of our time. How do states benefit from globalization, while at the same time protecting a national space from unwanted influences, people, goods and activities? Answering these questions requires a firm understanding of a state's border orientation, or the state's commitment to the public, authoritative, and spatial display of its capacities to control the terms of penetration of its national borders, often in response to perceived vulnerabilities to external "threats." To better understand this concept, this project collects global data on state presence along international borders, locating border fences and walls, and identifying the location, and extent, of state presence at international border crossings. This project will yield significant broader impact through several policy-relevant insights central to understanding the causes and consequences of international border security policies. By developing the concept of border orientation, the PIs are better able to evaluate which factors lead to and emanate from societal concerns over security and why these are expressed as physical barriers at the border. The data generated will allow for comprehensive analyses of the comparative utility of different kinds of border security infrastructure. The granularity of the location data produced here will contribute to scientific knowledge about (sometimes localized) positive and negative externalities associated with various kinds of border control. This project will develop data and conceptual tools necessary to evaluate whether and how physical border investments impact a variety of political and economic activities. This research endeavor is guided by an innovative spatial concept of state governance, which the PIs call border orientation: a latent concept tapping a state's commitment to the public, authoritative, and spatial display of its capacities to control the terms of penetration of its national borders, often in response to perceived vulnerabilities to external threats. Empirically, the study builds on this concept by collecting original information on state presence along the border. The intellectual merit of this project centers around its primary deliverables: two data collection efforts aimed at better understanding and measuring border orientation. The first is a database documenting the exact location of every border crossing in the world for the years 1990-2018. At each location, satellite imagery will be collected to infer the extent to which states attempt to filter the movement of goods and people at these border crossings. The second effort will tap existing data on international border walls to locate wall and fence segments geospatially and temporally through 2018 as precisely as possible. Such data are essential for understanding changing patterns of traffic, transactions, and settlement and will therefore provide a means of accumulating knowledge on border politics across a variety of social science disciplines.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.