What explains NATO’s decision to admit new members even when they fall short of the organisational expectations of democracy and adherence to human rights? After the end of the Cold War NATO put in place an elaborate scheme of democratic conditionality; however, recent waves of enlargement since 2004 have proven increasingly incompatible with these criteria. This paper argues that this policy results from gradual erosion in the prominence of democratic discourse within the organisation, normalising deviations from previous optimistic expectations that became increasingly unsustainable, inducing within-organisation socialisation. This process is paralleled by an increasingly hostile Russian foreign policy, that served as a catalyst for the cognitive normalisation process. To support the argument, the author conducts interviews with key NATO officials previously or presently involved in the enlargement process, building on unique institutional accessibility, performs content analysis of North Atlantic Council discussions (ministerial/heads of state level) and NATO Summit Declarations in 1995‒2019, diving into Albania’s accession in 2009 as a case study. The results suggest that NATO decision-making over expansion was subject to significant politicisation that increased over time, normalising the deviations, reducing the democratic discourse in periods that preceded the integration of states that did not meet the criteria for democracy (most notably, Albania in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020). The results emphasise the place of cognitive processes in IO decision-making on enlargement.

为何北约决定接纳新成员，即使他们没有达到组织对民主和遵守人权的期望？冷战结束后，北约制定了一套详尽的民主条件计划。但是，事实证明，自2004年以来最近的扩张浪潮越来越不符合这些标准。本文认为，该政策是由于组织内民主话语的突出地位逐渐受到侵蚀而造成的，它使与先前变得越来越不可持续的乐观期望的偏离正常化，从而引发了组织内部的社会化。俄罗斯外交政策日益趋于敌对，与此同时，俄罗斯外交政策也成为认知正常化进程的催化剂。为了支持这一论点，作者以独特的机构可及性为基础，对先前或目前参与扩大进程的北约主要官员进行了采访，对北大西洋理事会的讨论（部长/国家元首）和1995-2019年的北约峰会宣言进行了内容分析，潜入了作为案例研究，阿尔巴尼亚于2009年加入。结果表明，北约在扩张方面的决策受到了重大政治化的影响，随着时间的流逝，这些政治化趋于正常化，从而使分歧得以消除，并在不符合民主标准的国家一体化之前的时期（最著名的是阿尔巴尼亚）减少了民主言论。 2009年，2017年的黑山和2020年的北马其顿）。结果强调了认知过程在IO决策中的地位。