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

CONNECT试图系统地分析国际条约秘书处随时间的影响。该项目采用混合方法的研究设计，旨在调查两个研究问题：国际条约秘书处如何随时间和跨问题领域对多边谈判的进程、话语和结果施加影响？秘书处在特定问题信息流中的社会嵌入性在多大程度上解释了这种影响？尽管国际条约秘书处的能见度越来越高，关于它们在全球政治中的作用的研究也越来越多(Bauer，2006；Biermann&Siebenhüner，2009；Busch，2014；Jenah，2014)，但随着时间的推移和跨政策领域，它们对全球政策产出的影响的来源和因果机制尚未得到系统研究。CONNECT将通过以新颖的方式将理论和方法结合起来，促进这一研究差距：该项目将使用社会网络理论，并利用定量社会网络分析(SNA)和定性话语分析(DA)技术，以促进对秘书处在两个不同政策领域的影响的原因和机制的理解。此外，CONNECT将扩大先前关于环境条约秘书处作用的调查结果，纳入第二个政策领域，即残疾政策领域的条约秘书处。总之，CONNECT追求四个密切相关的中心目标，并处理与经验、方法和理论水平有关的基本进展：1.从经验上重新评估国际条约秘书处随时间的影响，2.比较条约秘书处在不同领域(《气候公约》、《生物多样性公约》、《残疾人权利公约》)的影响，3.将SNA的量化结果与与发展议程收集的定性见解结合起来，以确定秘书处影响力的核心决定因素，以及4.利用社会网络理论从理论上重新界定国际条约秘书处的社会嵌入性及其对政策产出的影响之间的关系。该项目试图通过建立在我们项目第一阶段(即我们的项目ENVIPA)的结果和当前技术状态的基础上，为这些研究目标作出贡献。

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.