External Threats Do Not Uniformly Strengthen Security Communities: A Conditional Theory of NATO Resilience
Journal: Journal of Political Science and International Relations
Year: 2026

When do external threats strengthen security community cohesion, and when do they produce fragmentation? Security community theory has generated substantial insight into how communities form and maintain peaceful relations among members but has largely neglected how communities respond to external existential threats. This paper addresses this gap by developing a conditional theory of security community resilience specifying three scope conditions that determine whether external challenges reinf