Strategic Partnerships in the World: The Global Strategic Partnership Dataset

• In Event: Poster Session: International Collaboration

Abstract

This article introduces the Global Strategic Partnership (GSP) dataset, which covers all interstate strategic partnership agreements between 1990 and 2020. Strategic partnerships (SP) are generally embedded in joint statements and agreements that regularize diplomatic and intergovernmental engagement. They demonstrate mutual expectations of cooperation but tend to be less institutionalized and entail no security commitments aiming at the third parties. Since the end of the Cold War, SPs have become a common practice among states seeking multidimensional collaboration. Despite a growing scholarly attention paid on the emergence of SPs, however, progress has been hindered by the lack of cross-national analysis in the literature. The GSP dataset fills the void. This article discusses the definitional and conceptual issues of SP and lays out the operationalization strategy that we follow to construct the dataset. We give an overview of the structure, contents, and main unit of analysis of the dataset. We further provide descriptive analyses of the dataset and demonstrate the trends in the growth of SPs and important patterns of SPs across time and space, including frequency of the construction of SPs, changes of contents of SP treaties. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Authors

• Nien-chung Chang-Liao, Academia Sinica

• Tse-Min Fu, University of Southern California

• Shane Hsuan-Yu Lin, Academia Sinica

• Kai-Wen Tung, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities