Growing Strong, Growing Apart: The Erosion of Democracy as a Core Pillar of NATO Enlargement, 1949-2023

Since its establishment, NATO has admitted a variety of new members in several enlargement rounds, even though some of these countries fall short of the organizational expectations of democracy--as stipulated in an elaborate scheme of texts, speeches, and statements. Growing Strong, Growing Apart maintains that this policy results from gradual erosion in the prominence of democratic discourse within the organization, normalizing deviations from previous optimistic expectations that became increasingly unsustainable after the end of the Cold War. Eyal Rubinson’s analysis of NATO’s conduct in this regard builds on archival research and interviews with NATO officials and senior member states’ representatives. He discusses this theme in depth through detailed case studies, each covering a different period, emphasizing the place of cognitive processes in international organizations’ decision-making.

Eyal Rubinson is Lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science, Ariel University, Israel, and Visiting Scholar at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), Spain.