Strategic Partnership between a State and an International Organization:

An Ideal Model

Model Idealny

Partnerstwa Strategicznego Pomiędzy Państwem a Organizacją Międzynarodową

Funding: The project is financed under the National Science Centre

(Narodowe Centrum Nauki) grant no. UMO-2013/11/D/HS5/01260 (“SONATA 6”).

Project implementation: August 2014 – August 2017

In less than two previous decades, ‘strategic partnerships’ has become a marketable term and genuine currency of international politics let alone the incrementally globalizing international economy wherefrom the term originates. The proliferation of ‘strategic partnerships’ in international relations has greatly diffused and, at the same time, devalued the concept, which still lacks a stringent operational definition. A salient and ever-growing number of ‘strategic partnerships’ not only between states, but also – from quite recently – between states and other international actors, predominantly international organizations, can be observed worldwide. Along with the European Union, which may be legitimately seen as a ‘poster child’ of international organization’s ‘strategic partnerships’, the bonds of strategic cooperation and partnership are linking states with international organizations that span all over the continents. The Andean Community, African Union, ASEAN, NATO, MERCOSUR, OSCE, and other strategically relevant international players have succeeded in developing their own ‘strategic partnerships’ networks of incremental density.

Despite such a widespread proliferation of ‘strategic partnerships’ in the international system marked by power shifts and emerging multinodality, the term remains one of the most ill-defined concepts in political science and international relations. Given the rising relevance of the term in state foreign policy vocabulary as well as its powerful projection onto policies pursued by international organizations, the SPaSIO project funded by the NCN “Sonata 6” Grant tackles this theoretical and empirical problem aiming to explore and explain the phenomenon of ‘strategic partnerships’ between states and international organizations. This theoretically informed interdisciplinary collaborative research project, located at the cutting edge of political science, international relations and foreign policy analysis, develops the analytical model of a ‘strategic partnership’ between a state and an international organization identifiable and deployable beyond the state-centered alliance or hard/soft power balancing theories and approaches. The devised methodological framework encompasses a mixed methods research strategy and benefits from the synergetic deployment of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, including the performance of computer-assisted qualitative (Atlas.ti) and quantitative (SPSS) data analysis. With ‘strategic partnerships’ manifesto research (documentary analysis and strategic narratives analysis) at the core of its methodological concept, the project will empirically examine twelve spatially diversified case studies sampled representatively to reflect a basic 3×4 matrix of interaction between states and international organizations (three levels for states as strategic actors: global, major and minor regional powers; four levels for international organizations as strategic actors: global international and supranational strategic actors, as well as major and minor regional strategic actors).

To download the SPaSIO project outline click: SPaSIO Project Outline.