The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had been transformed in the first half of the 1990ies out of the former CSCE as a security community, centred on confidence-building measures, military transparency, and pragmatic diplomacy. This re‑definition was designed to heal the political divides of the Cold War era and to harness the prevailing optimism of the “end of history” thesis. This narrative frames democracy as the most desirable regime form. The expectation was that democratic governance would naturally spill over into the security domain, with mutual trust acting as the linchpin of this relationship and linked to the rather implicit than explicit assumption of the strong nexus between democracy and peaceful forms of interaction between states – hence a modified form of the democratic peace assumption. Against this background, this study examines how the organization’s security community logic evolved over time by analysing major annual and executive reports and further selected key OSCE documents 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 away from trust-based norms already before the watershed moment of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine 2022, especially in the OSCE’s field of activity of its confidence building measures. We argue that this normative drift becomes visible at the same time through an institutional drift, which we intend to define and operationalise further as an explanatory pattern of our study. Hence, as an additional conceptual basis we take a look at changes in institutional settings of the OSCE. This will be contextualised based on a number of factors. Amon those are the narrowing operational constraints within the OSCE, the internal contestation of the OSCE’s norms-focused agenda, as well as major geopolitical shocks, situated between Russia and other European states. We took a careful selection of the shocks we intend to include into our analysis: Those are the first Chechnya war 1994-1996, parts of the second Chechnya war 1999-2009, the coloured revolutions 2003/4, the Russian-Georgian war 2008 as well as the Euromaidan revolution of dignity in Ukraine 2013/2014.

The prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy in peacebuilding conceptualizes peace as a function of market integration, treating trade as an inherently pacifying force that generates confidence through interdependence. This assumption also informs policy discourse. However, both the theoretical foundations and empirical claims of trade-based confidence building measures are contested. Critics argue that this approach obscures power asymmetries in post-conflict economies and ignores analysing scope condition for trade-based confidence building. Moreover, existing research largely focuses on inter-state conflict, leaving the dynamics of intra-state conflicts underexplored. This paper critically examines trade as a confidence-building mechanism in the context of protracted intra-state conflict and contested statehood, focusing on the Moldova and its Transnistrian region. Drawing on political economy and critiques of the liberal peace, it argues that trade does not automatically generate trust. Instead, its confidence-building potential is conditional and shaped by political, institutional, and regulatory contexts. To make this point, this paper pursues a mixed-methods study of entrepreneurs operating on both banks of the Nistru River in Moldova. Moldova offers a theoretically significant case due to its simultaneous integration into the EU’s economic space, continued trade relations with Russia and other post-Soviet markets, and the unresolved status of Transnistria. These overlapping trajectories produce a fragmented economic landscape in which firms navigate divergent regulatory regimes, customs procedures, and political narratives, highlighting tensions between neoliberal integration and contested sovereignty. Empirically, the study draws on an original quantitative survey conducted in November–December 2025 among entrepreneurs on both sides of the Nistru, complemented by qualitative interviews planned for March–April 2026. The survey captures attitudes toward EU integration, engagement with Russia and other CIS markets, cross-river trade, and perceptions of regulatory uncertainty, political risk, and inter-firm trust. Interviews explore how entrepreneurs interpret trade as both a pragmatic necessity and a politically charged practice. The findings are expected to challenge neoliberal assumptions by showing that while entrepreneurs value material benefits from market access, trade is not experienced as politically neutral. Cross-river trade is likely driven more by pragmatism than reconciliation, with confidence shaped less by trade volume than by perceptions of fairness, predictability, and distancing from conflict dynamics. The paper reconceptualizes trade-based confidence building as a conditional and contested process embedded in broader political relations and conflict configurations of the conflict, rather than viewing it solely as a direct outcome of economic integration per sé.

The prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy in peacebuilding conceptualizes peace as a function of market integration, treating trade as an inherently pacifying force that generates confidence through interdependence. This assumption also informs policy discourse. However, both the theoretical foundations and empirical claims of trade-based confidence building measures are contested. Critics argue that this approach obscures power asymmetries in post-conflict economies and ignores analysing scope condition for trade-based confidence building. Moreover, existing research largely focuses on inter-state conflict, leaving the dynamics of intra-state conflicts underexplored. This paper critically examines trade as a confidence-building mechanism in the context of protracted intra-state conflict and contested statehood, focusing on the Moldova and its Transnistrian region. Drawing on political economy and critiques of the liberal peace, it argues that trade does not automatically generate trust. Instead, its confidence-building potential is conditional and shaped by political, institutional, and regulatory contexts. To make this point, this paper pursues a mixed-methods study of entrepreneurs operating on both banks of the Nistru River in Moldova. Moldova offers a theoretically significant case due to its simultaneous integration into the EU’s economic space, continued trade relations with Russia and other post-Soviet markets, and the unresolved status of Transnistria. These overlapping trajectories produce a fragmented economic landscape in which firms navigate divergent regulatory regimes, customs procedures, and political narratives, highlighting tensions between neoliberal integration and contested sovereignty. Empirically, the study draws on an original quantitative survey conducted in November–December 2025 among entrepreneurs on both sides of the Nistru, complemented by qualitative interviews planned for March–April 2026. The survey captures attitudes toward EU integration, engagement with Russia and other CIS markets, cross-river trade, and perceptions of regulatory uncertainty, political risk, and inter-firm trust. Interviews explore how entrepreneurs interpret trade as both a pragmatic necessity and a politically charged practice. The findings are expected to challenge neoliberal assumptions by showing that while entrepreneurs value material benefits from market access, trade is not experienced as politically neutral. Cross-river trade is likely driven more by pragmatism than reconciliation, with confidence shaped less by trade volume than by perceptions of fairness, predictability, and distancing from conflict dynamics. The paper reconceptualizes trade-based confidence building as a conditional and contested process embedded in broader political relations and conflict configurations of the conflict, rather than viewing it solely as a direct outcome of economic integration per sé.

Protracted conflicts in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood pose enduring challenges to regional stability and to the European Union’s capacity to act as a security provider short of full political resolution. Among these, the Transnistrian conflict represents a particularly revealing case: while political negotiations have remained largely frozen since the early 2000s, economic interdependence across the Dniester River has persisted and, in some domains, deepened. This contribution explores the extent to which economic instruments—rather than formal security arrangements—can contribute to stabilization in such contexts. It focuses on the role of trade generated by the EU–Moldova Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) as a potential confidence-building mechanism in the Transnistrian conflict. The extension of the DCFTA to Transnistria in 2016 constitutes a unique empirical experiment. For the first time, a comprehensive EU trade regime was applied to the territory of a de facto state without recognition, creating incentives for regulatory adaptation and sustained interaction between conflict parties. Drawing on original analysis of Moldovan customs data and a newly constructed cooperation index based on OSCE 5+2 negotiation communiqués, this contribution examines whether trade integration under the DCFTA has helped stabilize dynamics in the conflict and, if so, under what conditions. Empirically, the findings show a clear reorientation of Transnistrian exports toward the EU following DCFTA implementation. This trade dependence generated functional pressures for cooperation, particularly in technical domains such as customs procedures, transport, telecommunications. These pressures coincided with a measurable increase in cooperation between 2016 and 2019, culminating in the implementation of the Berlin Plus package—often cited as the most successful phase of confidence-building since the conflict’s militarisation in 1992. From this perspective, trade acted as a stabilising factor by embedding economic actors on both banks into shared regulatory frameworks and by incentivising pragmatic engagement despite unresolved sovereignty disputes. The analysis also highlights the limits of trade-based stabilization. First, the spillover effects remained largely confined to technical and socio-economic issues, without translating into progress on political or security questions. Second, the opacity surrounding the conditionalities governing Transnistria’s participation in the DCFTA constrained societal ownership and transparency, limiting broader social spillovers. Finally, external shocks—most notably the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—demonstrated the fragility of trade-induced cooperation: while economic interdependence persisted, the 5+2 negotiation framework collapsed after 2022.