NATO Decision-Making: The ‘Consensus Rule’ Endures Despite Challenges

Decision-making by consensus is practised within a range of international organizations, including the United Nations, World Trade Organization, European Union, and International Monetary Fund. In these organizations, consensus is not the only form of decision-making, however. Specific provisions exist to reach decisions by alternative means (for example, majority or weighted voting) or to formally block a proposal altogether, for example through exercising a veto in the UN Security Council (Movsisyan 2008;Payton 2010). In NATO, however, decision-making by consensus is so deeply rooted in the ethos of the Alliance that it permeates all layers of its deliberations and practical procedures, although the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty does not specify (with a single exception) how collective decisions are to be made (NATO 1949).