Projects

Classifier Project: Analysing State Positions in International Negotiation Forums

This project develops a systematic classification and data collection framework for statements by state representatives in international negotiation forums.

The objective is to collect, systematize, and quantitatively analyze national positions in order to better understand negotiation dynamics, coalition-building processes, shifts in positions, and potential compromise spaces.

The collected data are compiled into structured datasets and translated into policy-relevant insights.

Defence Budget Components Dataset (DeBuC): Global Comparative Dataset on Disaggregated Military Expenditure

The project aims to build a global, comparative, and updateable dataset on disaggregated state military and defence expenditure. Unlike existing datasets, which primarily capture aggregate spending totals, DeBuC focuses on the systematic collection, reclassification, documentation, and comparative analysis of individual budget items within national defence and military budgets.

At its core, the project examines how state defence expenditure is internally structured, which priorities governments set within their military budgets, and how these priorities evolve over time and across countries in ways that can be compared reliably. The project addresses a central gap in existing research: while aggregate expenditure figures provide an initial overview of military resources, they allow only limited conclusions about concrete spending profiles, procurement priorities, research and development shares, personnel structures, or investment priorities.

DeBuC seeks to provide a state-of-the-art dataset that enables deeper scholarly analysis of defence planning, expenditure structures, and security-policy priorities. At the same time, the data infrastructure is designed to be maintained over the long term, documented with methodological transparency, and made systematically usable for comparative research.

The project is conceived as a long-term endeavour and aims to contribute to the empirically grounded analysis of military capabilities, state priority-setting, and global arms dynamics.

Strategic Vulnerabilities and Security Adaptation

This project examines how material and ecological resource vulnerabilities are translated into security policy. While the geopolitical relevance of critical resources, supply chains, environmental change, and strategic chokepoints is widely acknowledged, we still lack a systematic approach to the conditions under which such vulnerabilities actually produce measurable changes in foreign and security policy.

The project develops a comparative analytical framework for explaining when and how states respond to strategic vulnerabilities through changes in trade policy, security cooperation, military posture and strategic planning. Its empirical core lies in the systematic collection, systematization, and analysis of original data across different sectors and regions.

This includes the construction of a new dataset on patterns of material and ecological vulnerability, associated threat perceptions, and observable forms of security policy response (Resource Vulnerability Index). The resulting data will be curated, documented, and prepared in order to provide an accessible empirical resource for future work on security, vulnerability, and strategic competition.

Combining structured comparison, dataset-building, and mixed-methods analysis, the project links broad empirical mapping with in-depth case study research. In doing so, it aims to generate both a robust empirical foundation and a generalisable theoretical contribution to research on international security, strategic competition, and the political consequences of vulnerability.