Description
In this paper, we use automated text analysis to study positioning of states during the First Meeting of State Parties of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in Vienna in June 2022. Our results shows that participants in the meeting can be placed along a single axis, roughly associated with whether they view nuclear disarmament in an “old” way as a primarily diplomatic problem or in a “new” way as a humanitarian and emancipatory issue. We identify that Western European participants and those closer to the US and Russia are more likely to see disarmament in the “old” way; whereas the Latin American countries are more likely to see it in the “new way”. Our paper provides a new, quantitative way of measuring states’ positioning vis-à-vis the TPNW and contributes to the emerging scholarship on the treaty.
