IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v59y2005i04p973-1012_05.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Security Institutions as Agents of Socialization? NATO and the ‘New Europe’

Author

Listed:
  • Gheciu, Alexandra

Abstract

This article examines the dynamics and implications of practices of socialization enacted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in post–Cold War Central and Eastern Europe. With particular emphasis on the Czech Republic and Romania, I argue that NATO relied extensively on mechanisms of teaching and persuasion to project a particular set of liberal-democratic norms of security into the former Eastern bloc. Several interrelated conditions affected NATO's ability to teach new norms to Central and East European actors: the parties' mutual recognition of their respective roles as “teachers” and “students”; the socializees' identification with the Western security community that NATO claimed to embody; and systematic interactions between teachers and students. In teaching new liberal-democratic norms, NATO exercised significant power: the power to shape its socializees' interpretations of the world and ideas about proper ways of acting in that world. The shared ideational framework established via teaching also empowered subsequent persuasive appeals launched in the name of liberal-democratic norms. NATO conducted a socialization process that targeted—and often affected—not simply the behavior of Central and East European socializees, but also their definitions of national identity and interests.For extremely helpful comments on previous incarnations of this article, I am grateful to the editors of International Organization, two anonymous reviewers, Jeffrey Checkel, Michael Zürn, Alastair Iain Johnston, Michael C. Williams, and all the participants in the IDNET workshops.

Suggested Citation

  • Gheciu, Alexandra, 2005. "Security Institutions as Agents of Socialization? NATO and the ‘New Europe’," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 59(4), pages 973-1012, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:59:y:2005:i:04:p:973-1012_05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818305050332/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cupać, Jelena & Ebetürk, Irem, 2022. "Competitive mimicry: The socialization of antifeminist NGOs into the United Nations," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 11(3), pages 379-400.
    2. Geoffrey P.R. Wallace, 2008. "Alliances, Institutional Design, and the Determinants of Military Strategy," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 25(3), pages 224-243, July.
    3. Cupać, Jelena, 2020. "Orders, purposes, and tasks: How do states act in international security organizations?," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2020-104, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    4. Johannes Karreth & Jaroslav Tir & Douglas M Gibler, 2022. "Latent territorial threat and democratic regime reversals," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 59(2), pages 197-212, March.
    5. David Benjamin Weyrauch & Christoph Valentin Steinert, 2022. "Instrumental or intrinsic? Human rights alignment in intergovernmental organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 89-115, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:59:y:2005:i:04:p:973-1012_05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.