The research project assumes a comparative analysis of the great and middle-ranked powers’ changing security agendas and their responses to the challenges of global and regional security governance. It undertakes an empirical study of the global and regional security perceptions of the G-8 elites (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and China. The work involves:

• developing a security threat typology, identifying the sources of those threats, and rank-ordering and estimating the relative probabilities of security threats.
• assessing the current institutional options for meeting those threats along two separate continua, global versus regional, and formal versus informal. This will include a capabilities and compatibilities assessment of regional and global security institutions; a determination of the EU’s progress towards an effective ESDP and CSFP; and the creation of a functional typology of security responses along the dimensions of conflict prevention, peace-enforcing, peace-making, and peace-keeping, in order to define the limits and types of cooperation possible between NATO and the EU, and between America, Europe, and Asia;
• ascertaining the prospects of a division of labour between the global and regional institutions of security governance, and to assess the prospects for trading collective goods (e.g., military security in exchange for economic assistance).

Methodology: The empirical evidence supporting the analysis and project objectives will be derived from five sources:

• First, a comprehensive review of national academic security debates (theory- and policy-driven) within the G-8 +1;
• Second, a comprehensive review of national political debates drawn from published government security and foreign policy documents as well as parliamentary debates on security affairs.
• Third, survey data derived from an electronic or print questionnaire sent to all members of parliamentary committees and subcommittees with a security writ.
• Fourth, 10 to 15 direct interviews with selective members of security-relevant parliamentary committees, high-ranking civil servants who shape government policy on security affairs, and members of the informal elite, particularly electronic and print journalists, high profile and policy relevant academics, and members of policy relevant and influential think-tanks.
• Fifth, supplementary empirical data drawn from pre-existing public opinion and elite surveys on security.

The study has three specific aims: to examine the problem of security governance in three different regional contexts: Europe, Trans-Atlantic and Asia; to address the need for a reconceptualisation of threat, the state, and the institutional framework for understanding those threats; and to construct a replicable cross-national survey that allows us to account for variations in elite perceptions, and to craft institutional solutions facilitating global and regional security governance. Furthermore, the study identifies the sources of convergent and divergent interests and assesses the implications for regional or global security cooperation. It will establish diffusion and governance as the key concepts for understanding the relative intractability and importance of the new security agenda; to demonstrate that diffusion and governance contribute to the institutionalist and multi-lateralist argument that unilateral action is inefficient and even counter-productive.

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• Emil Kirchner, University of Essex

• Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Université Libre de Bruxelles
• University of Exeter
• Göteborg University
• Institut Français des Relations Internationales
• Aarhus University
• Forum on the Problems of Peace and War
• Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen
• Università Degli Studi Di Trento
• University of Southern Denmark