Allied but close?

This thesis aims to measure NATO alliance cohesion in an interval of [-1, +1] based on the affinity scores derived from United Nations General Assembly voting data. The thesis focuses on the dyadic scores of NATO members in order to generate a value of cohesiveness between pairs which indicate how alike they are in terms of votes they cast at the General Assembly. Current international developments from the Middle East to Eurasia and Asia make NATO one of the key actors once again. On the other hand, NATO faces inter-alliance disagreements about number of issues such as Syrian crisis, growing authoritarianism in some member states and fear of disintegration of Europe emerged with Brexit make the headlines if NATO is close to an end. Hence, thesis questions how close the member states to each other and if they can indeed make an "alliance". The degree of cohesiveness obtained from data reveals how member states' preferences are reflected in form of voting and helps to figure out if inter-alliance disaggrements or international crisis influence the states preferences and cohesiveness of the alliance. Apart from existing theoretical assumptions, this thesis brings a different approach for understanding NATO, its past, present, and the future.