Empirical Research on International Organizations

Undertaking advanced, reliable, and practice-oriented research on international organizations (IOs) demands that political scientists be involved in collaborative efforts with experts in statistics, computer programming, and machine learning. The 5-day workshop on ‘Empirical Research on International Organizations’ will accelerate the ‘technological revolution’ in empirical research on IOs by blending the expertise of scholars from social and exact sciences with that of practitioners. There are four major aims to be achieved during the workshop.

(1) To bridge gaps between knowledge available in theory and practice, by providing (conceptualizing) tools for practitioners to improve collective decision-making processes in IOs and to assist countries’ diplomatic positioning in advance of negotiations within these organizations;

(2) To align researchers’ and diplomats’ expectations on the contributions of computerized text analysis, simulations, and advanced statistical techniques;

(3) To define upcoming research areas in which synergies between three major approaches (computerized text analysis, simulations, and advanced statistical techniques) can be of crucial importance in supporting decision-making processes in IOs;

(4) To establish the foundation for future collective research efforts involving members of this workshop, in view of potential new research proposals.

To facilitate achievement of the broad objectives stated above, the workshop will be clustered into themes related to three key IOs, i.e. (1) the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), (2) United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and (3) the Council of the EU. These are arguably the most prominent international organizations globally (UNSC and UNGA) and locally (the Council of the EU).