IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v23y2022i4p662-679.html

Convergence of European security and defense preferences? A quantitative text analysis of strategy papers, 1994–2018

Author

Listed:
  • Konstantin Gavras

    (Department of Social Sciences, 26573University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany)

  • Matthias Mader

    (Department of Politics and Public Administration, 26567University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany)

  • Harald Schoen

    (Department of Social Sciences, 26573University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany)

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, the EU aims to advance to a relevant and autonomous actor in international politics—especially concerning security and defense politics. Scholars interested in whether the EU member states actually converge in their security and defense preferences often analyze strategy papers qualitatively, focusing on selected countries at specific points in time. In this article, we propose a dictionary approach for analyzing the development of security and defense preferences within the EU over the last three decades using quantitative text analysis. We make use of 163 strategy papers, published by all EU member states and the EU itself since 1994. The findings show that EU member states react similarly to international events, but do not converge substantially in their preferences. Furthermore, there is no substantial convergence to the position of the EU itself. We finally discuss usefulness and validity of quantitative text analysis in comparative research more broadly.

Suggested Citation

  • Konstantin Gavras & Matthias Mader & Harald Schoen, 2022. "Convergence of European security and defense preferences? A quantitative text analysis of strategy papers, 1994–2018," European Union Politics, , vol. 23(4), pages 662-679, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:23:y:2022:i:4:p:662-679
    DOI: 10.1177/14651165221103026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165221103026
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/14651165221103026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bennett, Colin J., 1991. "What Is Policy Convergence and What Causes It?," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 215-233, April.
    2. Sebastián Briones Razeto & Nicole Jenne, 2021. "Security and defence policy documents: a new dataset," Defense & Security Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 346-363, July.
    3. de Vries, Erik & Schoonvelde, Martijn & Schumacher, Gijs, 2018. "No Longer Lost in Translation: Evidence that Google Translate Works for Comparative Bag-of-Words Text Applications," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(4), pages 417-430, October.
    4. Jonathan B. Slapin & Sven‐Oliver Proksch, 2008. "A Scaling Model for Estimating Time‐Series Party Positions from Texts," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 705-722, July.
    5. Laver, Michael & Benoit, Kenneth & Garry, John, 2003. "Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(2), pages 311-331, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierre-Marc Daigneault & Dominic Duval & Louis M. Imbeau, 2018. "Supervised scaling of semi-structured interview transcripts to characterize the ideology of a social policy reform," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(5), pages 2151-2162, September.
    2. Osterloh, Steffen, 2012. "Words speak louder than actions: The impact of politics on economic performance," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 318-336.
    3. Seraphine F. Maerz & Carsten Q. Schneider, 2020. "Comparing public communication in democracies and autocracies: automated text analyses of speeches by heads of government," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 517-545, April.
    4. Rebecca Cordell & Kristian Skrede Gleditsch & Florian G Kern & Laura Saavedra-Lux, 2020. "Measuring institutional variation across American Indian constitutions using automated content analysis," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(6), pages 777-788, November.
    5. Born, Andreas & Janssen, Aljoscha, 2020. "Does a District-Vote Matter for the Behavior of Politicians? A Textual Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches," Working Paper Series 1320, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    6. Anegundi, Aishwarya & Schulz, Konstantin & Rauh, Christian & Rehm, Georg, 2022. "Modelling Cultural and Socio-Economic Dimensions of Political Bias in German Tweets," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 29-40.
    7. Hausladen, Carina I. & Schubert, Marcel H. & Ash, Elliott, 2020. "Text classification of ideological direction in judicial opinions," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    8. Emile du Plessis, 2025. "Can Text-Based Statistical Models Reveal Impending Banking Crises?," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 65(3), pages 1265-1298, March.
    9. André Krouwel & Annemarie Elfrinkhof, 2014. "Combining strengths of methods of party positioning to counter their weaknesses: the development of a new methodology to calibrate parties on issues and ideological dimensions," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 1455-1472, May.
    10. Alexander Herzog & Slava Mikhaylov, 2010. "A new Database of Parliamentary Debates in Ireland, 1922--2008," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp338, IIIS, revised Jul 2010.
    11. Marcinkiewicz, Kamil & Auffenberg, Jennie & Kittel, Bernhard, 2012. "Politikpositionen im Reformprozess des öffentlichen Dienstes: Zur Übertragbarkeit der quantitativen Textanalyse," TranState Working Papers 162, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    12. Pongsak Luangaram & Yuthana Sethapramote, 2016. "Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy Effectiveness: Evidence from Thailand," PIER Discussion Papers 20, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
    13. Hanna Bäck & Marc Debus & Wolfgang C. Müller, 2016. "Intra-party diversity and ministerial selection in coalition governments," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 355-378, March.
    14. Martin Haselmayer & Marcelo Jenny, 2017. "Sentiment analysis of political communication: combining a dictionary approach with crowdcoding," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 51(6), pages 2623-2646, November.
    15. Diaf, Sami & Döpke, Jörg & Fritsche, Ulrich & Rockenbach, Ida, 2022. "Sharks and minnows in a shoal of words: Measuring latent ideological positions based on text mining techniques," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Christopher Wratil & Sara B Hobolt, 2019. "Public deliberations in the Council of the European Union: Introducing and validating DICEU," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 511-531, September.
    17. Ben Curran & Kyle Higham & Elisenda Ortiz & Demival Vasques Filho, 2018. "Look who’s talking: Two-mode networks as representations of a topic model of New Zealand parliamentary speeches," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-16, June.
    18. Daniel Finke & Andreas Fleig, 2013. "The merits of adding complexity: non-separable preferences in spatial models of European Union politics," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 546-575, October.
    19. Feldkircher, Martin & Hofmarcher, Paul & Siklos, Pierre L., 2024. "One money, one voice? Evaluating ideological positions of euro area central banks," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:23:y:2022:i:4:p:662-679. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.