TY - CHAP A1 - Bunde, Tobias ED - Mayer, Sebastian T1 - Social constructivism T2 - Research Handbook on NATO N2 - From a social constructivist perspective, NATO is not just another alliance or security institution, but the institutional embodiment of the transatlantic security community, which is based on a collective identity of liberal democracies. This collective identity serves as the main explanatory factor for social constructivist research dealing with NATO’s creation, its specific institutional design and its unique culture of consultation. It also helps understand NATO’s persistence after the end of the Cold War, its enlargement and its (liberal) out-of-area operations and missions in the post-Cold War period. Constructivism has become one of the key theoretical approaches in NATO research, offering a broader view of the Alliance and accounting for empirical anomalies that competitors fail to explain. Still, constructivist research has arguably not yet reached its full potential and could offer additional insights into NATO’s past, presence and future. These lacunae are addressed in the chapter. KW - NATO KW - Social constructivism KW - Transatlantic security community KW - Security cooperation KW - Identity KW - Liberal-democratic values Y1 - 2023 SN - 9781839103384 U6 - https://doi.org/10.4337/9781839103391.00014 SP - 69 EP - 83 PB - Edward Elgar Publishing Limited CY - Cheltenham ER -