Human Security Lab Researchers Team Up with Global Research Institute to Study US Foreign Policy

Professors Charli Carpenter, Bernhard Leidner and Kevin Young have launched a study, in concert with College of William and Mary’s Global Research Institute, of the impact of ‘human security’ thinking on US foreign policy elites. The study aims to explore what ‘human security’ means to practitioners embedded in US think-tanks, NGOs and national security agencies, to examine the transmission belt of ideas from the United Nations to the US national security establishment.

The Global Research Institute at College of William and Mary specializies in survey research on national security stakeholders and runs the Teaching and Research in International Politics survey and related snap polls of international relations scholars. The new project is part of an omnibus poll of US foreign policy elites conducted by GSI and is expected to yield significant raw text data ready for analysis by Human Security Lab researchers and undergraduate coders.

”Human security doctrine encourages public officials to think about the domestic national interest in connection to the global human interest, but we have no idea whether this has really made an impact on national security thinking,” says Professor Carpenter, PI on the project. “Our plan is to use a multi-method analysis to figure out the extent to which this is true, and figure out ways in which this thinking can be sharpened under the new Administration.”

The scholars expect to have findings out early in the year.