The new norms come to be taken for granted--accepted because they are seen as normal, given
“who we are.”
In other words, successful socialization results in a situation in which compliance
with the new norms occurs via a logic of appropriateness.
It is interesting to examine NATO’s involvement in Central/Eastern Europe within the
framework of rationalist/constructivist debates about socialization.
It might be tempting to portray
this case as a simple example of rationalist (self)socialization of instrumental actors engaged in the
pursuit of predefined interests. On this logic, in the post---Cold War context of asymmetric
distribution of power between the West and the former Eastern bloc, the Central/East Europeans
adopted the norms prescribed by the Western world in order to reap the material benefits that the
latter could provide. For instance, it could be that the Central/East Europeans sought membership to
obtain the alliance’s protection from a potential military resurgence of Russia. Linked to this, it
could be argued that NATO was important to Central/East Europeans because it represented the key
forum for organizing their relations to the only remaining superpower, the United States. From this
perspective, for the decision makers of former communist states, the question was simply one of
strategically altering their behavior to join NATO and thus advance their objective, pregiven
interest: security. Farrell succinctly captured this perspective when he argued: “[p]ower and
interests, in the form of coercion and inducement, can play a particularly important role in
international norm diffusion. A contemporary example of this is the adoption of Western norms of
military professionalism by post communist states desperate to join the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.”
On this logic, the role of NATO as “socializer” was minimal, involving the use of
instrumental incentives to pre-constituted actors, and the provision of information regarding the
conditions attached to those incentives.
I argue in the following pages that the logic of socialization of Central/East Europeans into
the norms prescribed by NATO departed in important ways from the rationalist logic of
socialization.
Two dimensions of this process are relevant to this study: (1) the dynamics of the
process (that is, the types of practices or mechanisms employed by NATO in the international
diffusion of new norms, and the conditions that facilitated/inhibited the operation of these
mechanisms); and (2) the outcome of the process of socialization (the internalization of new
9
Checkel 2005, this volume.
10
For analyses of different logics operating in international politics see, for example, Katzenstein, Keohane and
Krasner 1998; March and Olsen 1998; Ruggie 1998. Also relevant are March and Olsen 1989 and Powell and
DiMaggio 1991.
11
For useful analyses, see Checkel and Moravcsik 2001; Checkel 2001 and 2003;
and
Schimmelfennig 2003.
12
Farrell 2002, 70---71.
13
My argument here is similar to Adler’s critique of neoliberal institutionalist analyses of the role of Western
institutions in the former communist bloc. With particular reference to the OSCE, Adler has demonstrated that
international institutions have played an important role in former communist countries, not necessarily by increasing
interstate coordination and reducing transaction costs, but by community-building socialization practices that have had
the effect of changing intersubjective knowledge through which identities and interests are defined (see, in particular,
Adler 1998).
4
Convention