The thesis conceptualizes the collaboration category in the context of mini- and multilateralism. It defines the essential characteristics, features, and drivers for collaborative platform formation at the global level, along with key elements of interaction models concerning energy, food, military, and defense security. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the holistic view conceptualization of the collaborative approach to global governance as one of the optimal ways of geopolitical power balance maintained by considering the national priorities of countries, attracting new agents of influence, isolating the gravitational centers of power, and creating joint communicative spaces – collaborative platforms.
The thesis formulates items that have scientific significance. For the first time, a comprehensive analysis of minilateral collaborative practices in the energy, food, and military and defense sectors at the regional and global levels was carried out, with an emphasis on the advantages and vulnerabilities of multi- and minilateralism, minilateral cooperation cases, characteristics of the multi-subject nature of the global order, etc.
The experience of Ukraine's involvement in minilateral cooperation formats as a global trend in the field of establishing partnerships is systematized. The author's interpretation of the categories «polysubjectivity» and «collaborative platform» is presented. It ranked quantitative indicators of military expenditures by countries and subregions from 2017 to 2022 to derive trends in the defense sector based on open bases of military spending of SIPRI, national reports on budgetary expenditures by countries, analytical reports of international institutions (FAO, GRFC, IFPRI, IEA, International Institute for Strategic Studies, NASA, OECD, REACH, Rystad Energy, WHO, World Bank, WTO, EU, NATO, UN).
The role of trust, including institutional and socio-psychological indicators, among the internal factors of collaborative networks’ formation within the framework of a joint action platform as a driver in creating a general situational-positive atmosphere, readiness to compromise with a different vision of solving a problem and an articulation method of national and political self-identification in the global arena, was defined.
An author’s approach to the creation of a synthetic methodology for the study of collaborative platforms has been developed through the reinterpretation of some aspects and components of the «thousand plateau» concept of J. Deleuze and F. Guattari, cluster analysis, the ecology games concept, the devil shift theory, the ecosystem approach, as well as cross-case pattern for identification of prerequisites and regularities of empirical cases in the framework of mini-multilateralism.
A collaborative platform model has been developed based on the elements of social capital (relationships between players), characteristics of participants, assets (sources of funding), needs, and national priorities in the energy, food, and military-defense sectors through the clustering of components by the categories of autonomy of will and actions. A meaningful filling of the external and internal platform’s environment, along with the dynamics of their interaction due to constant fluctuations of some segments and attempts to adapt to them, with the leveling of structural gaps regarding the coordination of joint efforts within the existing interactive platforms (EU, NATO, UN) are proposed.
A value proposition of Ukraine as a powerful player in the energy, food, and military defense sector in the context of the regional and global security architecture has been developed through a description of the country’s resource and economic profile, an assessment of the current assets, detailing of Ukraine’s achievements in the military and defense domain (the defense industry development, countering hybrid threats, repelling cyberattacks, strengthening the cognitive stability of Ukrainian society), as well as the projected level of Ukraine’s influence on the global context in the case of building a wide network of strategic alliances.
