
Measuring Strategic Alignment
Spring 2024
The social sciences make use of many concepts that lack analytical precision and that are challenging to convert into measurable proxy variables. One such concept that is frequently used in the international relations literature is “strategic alignment,” although of course “political” and “party” alignment are commonly used in the context of domestic politics. The purpose of this project is to exploit a “text as data” approach to measuring strategic alignment, examining the extent to which such documents as party platforms/manifestoes, political speeches, and other statements of policy preferences across a group of states that are all members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) can help uncover the extent to which these countries are aligned on a range of national security issues. It is hoped that this approach may supplement currently used proxy measures of strategic alignment, like UN voting, that may suffer from important shortcomings. This work will feed into a book-length project on economic conflict among military allies.