The EU (strategic) partnering strategy: CAQDAS software in the service of detecting less obvious priorities and attitudes

The European Union’s partnering policy has often been criticised for conceptual blur and underdeveloped strategic rationale. The article aims to verify whether implementing CAQDAS software, specifically ATLAS.ti, can bring noticeable added value in its reconstruction. The first layer of analysis will determine whether the qualitative-quantitative content analysis of the four security strategies of the EU published between 2003 and 2022 can shed more light on at least some of the most intriguing issues regarding the list of European Union’s (strategic) partners, including their state or non-state nature, geostrategic position and hierarchy. Deploying the salience analysis and the co-occurrence analysis will also show what global issues are at the heart of the EU’s partnership strategy and whether Brussels’ pragmatic motivations outweigh ideological ones. Changes over time will also be observed. The second strand of research will examine the usefulness of existing ATLAS.ti tools, focusing on the dilemma: To what extent can researchers rely on artificial intelligence to achieve their research goals? It will test Auto Code and Data Analysis tools for the effectiveness and accuracy of the research process, comparing the results obtained with different proportions of tasks performed by the researcher and AI.