to address instability, but they do not explain the processes through which the alliance has acted to
shape state identities around norms perceived as a source of peace and progress.
In analyzing NATO as a self-defined institutional expression of the Western liberal
democratic community, it is useful to start from Risse’s account of the collective identity on which
the alliance is founded.
As Risse has argued, by virtue of the norms and sense of collective identity
it embodied, NATO did not disappear following the end of the Cold War. Indeed, “[t]he end of the
Cold War . . . not only does not terminate the Western community of values; it extends that
community into Eastern Europe and, potentially, even into the successor states of the Soviet Union,
creating a “pacific federation” of liberal democracies from Vladivostock to Berlin, San Francisco
and Tokyo.”
This article seeks to build on Risse’s argument by examining the dynamics of change
promoted by the organization in Central and Eastern Europe; in other words, by placing greater
emphasis on the actual politics involved in the eastern projection of liberal democratic norms.
More recently, a series of analysts have tried to establish, empirically, whether NATO
spreads liberal democratic norms in Central/Eastern Europe. Particularly influential has been
Reiter’s critique: according to him, to the extent that democratization occurs in certain ex-
communist countries, this is the result of domestic, rather than international factors.
critics such as Waterman and Zagorcheva, among others, have argued that, through the Partnership
for Peace, the Membership Action Plan, and various other programs, NATO has “co-opted” Central
and East European actors into activities that are likely to affect the ways in which the latter think
and behave. In other words, NATO has been involved in “socializing” Central and East Europeans
into the “Western ways.”
The introduction of the concept of socialization is a significant step
forward in explaining the relationship between NATO and Central/East Europeans, but analyses
such as those provided by Waterman and Zagorcheva need to be taken even further, to include an
examination of the specific mechanisms used to socialize Central/Eastern Europeans into the
Western ways of thinking and acting. That is precisely what this article seeks to achieve.
Following Checkel’s definition, socialization is understood here as a process of inducting
actors into the norms and rules of a given community.
To account for the complexity of NATO’s
involvement in Central/Eastern Europe, I adopt a constructivist approach, conceptualizing
socialization as a process in which the socializer (NATO) has targeted--and sometimes affected--
changes in the definitions of identity and interest held by the socializees. From a constructivist
perspective, successful socialization results in the internalization of the prescribed norms and rules.
4
Risse-Kappen 1995 and 1996.
5
Risse-Kappen 1996, 396.
6
Reiter 2001.
7
Waterman, Zagorcheva, and Reiter 2002.
8
Checkel 2005, this volume. and Lauer and Handel 1977. Also relevant are Berger and Luckmann 1967 and, within
the field of International Relations, especially Wendt 1999.
3
Convention