Likeminded partners in a geopolitical world

Co-PIs:

Associate Professor Malena Rosén Sundström (Lund University, Sweden)

 Professor Natalia Chaban (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)

In its first step, the project aims to conduct a pilot study and apply for funding of a joint research project. In Step 1, the pilot focuses on Sweden and NZ as two small likeminded Western democracies in a geopolitical world, and their coping with (new) security threats, applying a broad understanding of security and (perceived) security threats. Th project will map the security debates and experiences in both countries, but also in how these debates/experiences are perceived by the other country and the potentials for learning from each other (e.g. NZ’s experiences in coping with natural disasters and Sweden’s experiences in tackling hybrid threats), contributing to increased preparedness and resilience. The project also wants to study how the two states advance their diplomatic dialogue, widening its scope in collaboration and preparation to co-tackle global security challenges. In focus is RSTI diplomacy, cybersecurity, big tech, space and energy exchanges.

In our initial focus is joint comparative analysis of frames and narratives of Sweden and NZ tackling security threats in an increasingly fragile world – by themselves and together – in each other’s official, media, and diplomatic discourses. This analysis will be supported by the relevant literature review and offset by interviews with decision-makers and opinion-formers who will be invited to reflect on the potential of mutual learning and value of international collaboration between NZ and Sweden, two likeminded democratic partners, in a changing geopolitical world.

Inter- and multi-disciplinary synergy between EU studies, political science, and international strategic communication; a novel case in the study of bilateral NZ-Sweden cooperation; new contribution to IR literature on the likeminded democratic country-dynamic in a geopolitical world where competition, contestation and democratic backsliding are taking place. Opportunity to produce impact on practice community in both countries. 

Professor Nataia Chaban (UC)

Associate Professor Malena Rosén Sundström (Lund)

Professor Ole Elgström (Lund)

Mia Angeline (UC)

Team’s presentation at the Workshop "The EU as a crisis manager and security provider in decline? Capabilities, expectations and realities in an era of geopolitics" 

German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn, Germany

24-25 November 2026

One success-factor for the EU in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous international environment is the support by a curated cohort of likeminded global partners many of whom, like the EU and its member states, are middle-powers and small states. This research tracks what expectations are created from these encounters among the likeminded partners and ask if likeminded partners compete for popularity and support among each other and what are the consequences of this competition for the EU.

Informed by the perceptual approach in EU foreign policy (Chaban and Elgström 2023, 2024, 2025), this research hypothesises a set of gaps in how the likeminded partners perceive the EU and each other: (1) interpretation gaps, when different, sometimes opposite, interpretations of EU performance by the likeminded states often occur simultaneously, depending on the situation at hand, and (2) expectation gaps, when the likeminded states profile their conflicting expectations of the future. We link these gaps to perceived threats to the autonomy of EU’s likeminded states and engage with the security-oriented literature on threats of abandonment. Understanding these perceptual gaps may help reduce the gaps between the EU’s ambitious rhetoric and operational practice in crisis management and peacebuilding around the world when a sole actor is often not enough. 

Empirically, this research test these concepts in the case of the EU relations with New Zealand, comparing New Zealand’s perceptions of the EU over time and contrasting current perceptions of the EU vis-à-vis the US and other likeminded partners in the Asia-Pacific region.