The boundaries of choice: Institutions and United States post-Cold War national security doctrine

The subject of U.S. post-cold war national security doctrine has generated an enormous prescriptive literature and a growing body of historical writing. But there remains limited theoretical literature that attempts to explain why the United States pursued the policies it did over other alternatives. This dissertation seeks to explain outcomes in several areas of national security doctrine. It tests the hypothesis that institutional arrangements governing deliberations over post-cold war national security doctrine advantaged some policy alternatives over others. To this end, the dissertation develops an in-depth institutionalist approach and contrasts it with state-centered and society-centered explanations in three cases of U.S. post-cold war doctrine formulation: the decisions to keep and then expand NATO; the decision to reorient U.S. defense planning toward regional threats; and the decisions related to U.S. support for U.N. collective security operations. In each case, I address the question of why the United States pursued certain policy options over a wide range of other alternatives. The dissertation concludes by examining whether there is overall empirical support for the hypothesis and then considers the implications of the research for further development of institutionalist theory.