Did NATO expansion foster democratic development in Eastern Europe? Past scholarship offers conflicting answers to this question. We seek to bring clarity by focusing on the 2004 NATO expansion to include the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. We leverage the fact that we now as many years of data since NATO entry as we have between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2004 NATO expansion. We also use newly available and highly refined data on regime type. We show that NATO membership and anticipation thereof had little to no influence on democratic development in Eastern Europe. However, anticipation of European Union membership appears to have bolstered democratic development. Although the results cannot fully rule out NATO playing a secondary role, they make clear that NATO membership was not a necessary condition for democratic survival in Eastern Europe.

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对民主有好处吗？2004年北约扩张的证据

北约的扩张是否促进了东欧的民主发展？过去的奖学金为这个问题提供了矛盾的答案。我们试图通过集中于2004年北约的扩展来使范围更清晰，以包括爱沙尼亚，拉脱维亚和立陶宛的三个波罗的海国家，以及保加利亚，罗马尼亚，斯洛伐克和斯洛文尼亚。我们利用这样一个事实，即自从北约加入以来，我们现在拥有的数据与苏联解体到2004年北约扩张之间一样多。我们还使用有关制度类型的最新可用数据和高度完善的数据。我们表明，北约成员及其预期对东欧的民主发展几乎没有影响。但是，预期加入欧洲联盟似乎促进了民主发展。尽管结果不能完全排除北约在其中扮演次要角色，