“My trip to Europe is about America rallying the world’s democracies” and the elephant in NATO’s room

ABSTRACT

Using President Joe Biden’s opinion article published in The Washington Post ahead of the June 14, 2021 NATO Summit as a point of departure, the present paper examines how NATO members fare in terms of the core constituent elements of liberal democracy such as civil liberties and freedom of expression. To this effect, the paper uses three indices constructed and published by the Varieties of Democracy project. The Liberal democracy, Civil liberties and Freedom of expression indices. The results from club convergence analysis that covers the post-Cold War period, indicate the presence of different convergence clubs among NATO’s member-states and Turkey as the single divergent country. Moreover, given that many NATO countries are also EU members, the paper examines the comparative effect the dual NATO and EU membership had on the democratisation process of East European countries and Turkey. The findings suggest a statistically stronger impact of EU membership vis-à-vis NATO membership.

KEYWORDS:

• NATO
• Turkey
• V-Dem
• club convergence analysis
• democratic values

Acknowledgements

The paper has greatly benefited from the constructive comments and insightful suggestions by Todd Sandler and three anonymous referees. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm

2 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/05/joe-biden-europe-trip-agenda/

3 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_185000.htm?selectedLocale=en

4 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_56626.htm

5 https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/12/pdf/201201-Reflection-Group-Final-Report-Uni.pdf

6 https://www.nato.int/strategic-concept/

7 https://www.v-dem.net/media/filer_public/f9/08/f908eb53-c0e2-40f0-9294-e067537d8f0b/v-dem_policybrief_5_2016.pdf for an outline of the project and the indicators it compiles using both factual information from official documents as well as subjective assessments by experts.

8 For a detailed presentation of the methodology used to construct the indices of the V-Dem project see Coppedge et al. (2019).

9 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/05/joe-biden-europe-trip-agenda/

10 For Croatia and North Macedonia data are available from 1991 onwards, for Montenegro from 1998 onwards and for Slovakia from 1993 onwards.

11 The binding character of EU directives stems from Article 288 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007).

12 Press gaggle of November 1st, 2021 following the October G20 meeting in Italy. Available here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/11/01/press-gaggle-by-principal-deputy-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-en-route-glasgow-scotland/

13 Press gaggle of November 1st, 2021 following the October G20 meeting in Italy. Available here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/11/01/press-gaggle-by-principal-deputy-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-en-route-glasgow-scotland/

14 We wish to thank an anonymous referee for recommending us to pursue this line of investigation.

15 https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/enlargement-policy/glossary/accession-criteria_en

16 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_27444.htm

17 See for instance https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-erdogans-turkey-belong-in-nato-sweden-finland-join-veto-weapons-peace-broker-11652882743?mod=hp_trending_now_opn_pos3, also https://www.ft.com/content/f6292e9a-7608-4df8-8a88-b175a873dbec, and https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/06/16/is-turkey-more-trouble-to-nato-than-it-is-worth

18 https://www.ft.com/content/c6300920-f8ed-4897-99bc-fa9e749de3cd

19 Turkey’s army is the second largest in NATO.