Contesting UN Trusteeship (CUT): A historical text analysis dataset
Beschreibung
This data set presents the outputs of a text analysis of Session Protocols of the United Nations (UN) Trusteeship Council from 1947 to 1965, i.e. from the Council’s inception to the point where most so-called Trust Territories had gained independence. Trust Territories were former colonies of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan, including small archipelagos like Nauru and the Pacific Islands and mostly African entities preceding today’s Cameroon or Tanzania. The Trusteeship Council and wider Trusteeship System was instated by the allied powers to govern these territories and prepare them for independent self-government. The analysis has been conducted within the Subproject B05 “Securitization and Desecuritization in International Trusteeship Administrations” (PI: Professor Thorsten Bonacker) of the Collaborative Research Centre “Dynamics of Security”, funded by German Research Council (DFG, grant number 227068724). The publication of this data set is intended to foster open data research and a more open and inclusive debate on the history of international governance and of the United Nations in particular.
Data set contents:
1) CUT List of Analysed UN Documents.pdf: List of analysed UN Documents including URLs for the download at the United Nations Digital Library
2) CUT Code System MAXQDA2022.csv and html: Code System of the current dataset version including code cluster, codes, sub-codes and memos
3) Code Segments 1. Security and Securitization.csv until Code Segments 7. Independence.csv: Exported Coded Segments including Code, Document Name (indicating the respective Trusteeship Council Session), Beginning and End Page Number, Comments by coders, and “Segment”, i.e. the text passage coded from the Session Protocol.
In version 2.0, we are working to publish the MaxQDA Exchange file, which enables opening, browsing through and replication of the analysis. The PDF files used in the analysis can be obtained upon request. A request for permission to publish the full searchable files and the .mx22 file has been filed with the UN Digital Library.
Main contributions of the data set:
1) It offers results from the first integrated large-scale text analysis of the UN Trusteeship Council. Protocols from the 1st to 32nd session have been downloaded from the UN Digital Library, integrated into one PDF and run through Optic Character Recognition (OCR). The searchable PDFs are not publicly available yet but we have requested permission from the UN Digital Library to do so.
2) The data set offers insights on the emergence of a shared language and understanding between the two dominant geopolitical blocs of the Cold War Period, i.e. the Unites States and Western Allies and, on the other hand, the Soviet Union, on problems of international administration and governance arrangements. While much research on the Cold War period has examined the UN General Assembly with its spectacular high stakes-controversies, the Trusteeship Council is well suited for looking beyond this façade of tensions and confrontation. With an initial approach and interest in questions of threat and conflict communication, the text analysis identified the main themes of debates in the selected period as concerning colonialism, independence and development.
Methodological approach
The data set was built through an iterative quantitative and qualitative content analysis supported with the text analysis software MaxQDA. Led by Dr Philipp Lottholz and supported by Dr Aidan Gnoth, three student assistants, Emma Fahr, Karoline Möller (2022-2023) and Grigori Lifchits (2023-2025) have conducted multiple iterations of coding with feedback loops and adjustments in the coding tree in three overarching steps.
In a first step, the team defined codes based on existing literature on conflict and threat communication in international politics. This built on a framework of securitization theory based on the ‘Copenhagen School’ approach, which was employed and extended in the CRC “Dynamics of Security” (for details see https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/sfb138/science-communication/book-series-volume-1). Based on the speech act theory of JL Austin, such analyses focus on how certain objects or states are portrayed as being in danger of attack or – in the extreme – of destruction and annihilation. This perspective suggests to look for codes like ‘threat’ or ‘threaten’, and more intuitive ones like ‘aggress/ion’ and ‘attack’ to examine discussions of conflict and escalating violence. These are coded in the first cluster of “Security and Securitization”. A second cluster “Cooperation and Conflict” looks at obvious instances where both cooperation and conflict between the two geopolitical blocs is discussed. This served to verify the assumption that, despite the overall continuation of tension and contestation in the Trusteeship Council, there were also instances of dialogue and cooperation between the Soviet Union and Western powers.
In a second step, the team examined the topics and issues discussed through the conflict and threat communication analyses in step one. To this end, the colleagues read through the code segments identified in the respective clusters and also surveyed the topics and agenda items across the analysis period. This analysis led to the definition of four thematic clusters of “Colonial”, “Self-Determination” “Development” and “Independence”. These were analysed with a simple word search function which yielded a high number of segments (with “Self-Determination” being the largest cluster with 6,075 segments). These results were then structured by searching for word combinations or semantically associated words within the segments. For instance, in relation to TTs attaining independence, the Soviet Union and other delegations frequently concerns that this process was being ‘delayed’ and stalled, a narrative which, upon discovering, was auto-searched with across the cluster code segments.
The various criticisms of the Soviet Union were increasingly shared by a growing range of countries, were promptly answered and returned by Delegates from the Administering Authorities, i.e. administrations set up to govern the TTs by the Western Allies. The latter would accuse the Soviet Union of various forms of destructive and insulting conduct, which are coded separately in the cluster “Criticism” (which is much smaller but kept separately to trace this communication in detail). More detailed discussions and findings are currently under peer review and to be published soon.
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