Authors
Andrea Gawrich1; Murad Nasibov1; 1 Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany Discussion
The OSCE was established as a security community, centred on confidence-building measures, military transparency, and pragmatic diplomacy across political divides. This study examines how the organization’s security community logic evolved over time by analysing major annual and executive reports from 1994 to 2021. Using computational text analysis, we compare the relative use of language associated with practical security tools with vocabulary linked to norms, values, and principles, including human rights, equality, rule of law, and democratic participation. We expect the results to indicate a gradual shift in emphasis already before 2022, especially in the field of confidence building measures. While interpreting this pattern through the concept of 'institutional drift', we contextualise it with a number of factors: the narrowing operational constraints, internal contestation of norms-focused agenda and major geopolitical shocks in the grey zone between Russia and Europe. 
