The Politics of Burden-Sharing: Three Essays on NATO, Canada, and Fair-Share

TY - BOOK

T1 - The Politics of Burden-Sharing: Three Essays on NATO, Canada, and Fair-Share

AU - Kunertova, Dominika

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - This dissertation analyses the original burden-sharing debates in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during its formative years. In calling for a qualitative approach to studying NATO burden-sharing, this dissertation demonstrates that the NATO burden-sharing problem was normatively rooted in politics. In contrast to the dominant systemic, rationalist, and hypothetical-deductive studies, this dissertation explores the political, ethical, and practical dimension of burden-sharing at the level of national leaders. This conceptual, method-driven, and policy-oriented dissertation uses interpretation as its research strategy and develops a qualitative approach with a political, normative, and historical focus of inquiry. The in-depth and context-sensitive analysis of archival materials reconstructs how the practitioners themselves made sense of, and discursively framed, the NATO burden-sharing problem in both their public and private discourse. Furthermore, this doctoral research employs the traditions of normative ethics as analytical tools to better grasp national contribution strategies and to interpret the burden-sharing problem through the lenses of distributive justice. The Politics of Burden-Sharing consists of three separate articles connected through the common theme of NATO burden-sharing. While focusing primarily on the Canadian political, bureaucratic, and senior military leaders under the St. Laurent Premiership (1948-1957), the dissertation links these traditional burden-sharing debates with the contemporary post-2014 NATO discussions to draw some lessons learned for a fairer burden-sharing within the Alliance.

AB - This dissertation analyses the original burden-sharing debates in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during its formative years. In calling for a qualitative approach to studying NATO burden-sharing, this dissertation demonstrates that the NATO burden-sharing problem was normatively rooted in politics. In contrast to the dominant systemic, rationalist, and hypothetical-deductive studies, this dissertation explores the political, ethical, and practical dimension of burden-sharing at the level of national leaders. This conceptual, method-driven, and policy-oriented dissertation uses interpretation as its research strategy and develops a qualitative approach with a political, normative, and historical focus of inquiry. The in-depth and context-sensitive analysis of archival materials reconstructs how the practitioners themselves made sense of, and discursively framed, the NATO burden-sharing problem in both their public and private discourse. Furthermore, this doctoral research employs the traditions of normative ethics as analytical tools to better grasp national contribution strategies and to interpret the burden-sharing problem through the lenses of distributive justice. The Politics of Burden-Sharing consists of three separate articles connected through the common theme of NATO burden-sharing. While focusing primarily on the Canadian political, bureaucratic, and senior military leaders under the St. Laurent Premiership (1948-1957), the dissertation links these traditional burden-sharing debates with the contemporary post-2014 NATO discussions to draw some lessons learned for a fairer burden-sharing within the Alliance.

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - The Politics of Burden-Sharing: Three Essays on NATO, Canada, and Fair-Share

PB - Université de Montréal

ER -