March 2014
Tapio Raunio (University of Tampere) / Wolfgang Wagner (VU University Amsterdam)
Legislative-Executive Relations in Foreign and Security Policy:
A framework for analysis and call for papers
With two notable exceptions, legislative-executive relations in the realm of foreign and
security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. One exception is the recent
wave of studies on the parliamentary control of military missions that have emerged in the
wake of the so-called Democratic Peace debate.1 The other exception is the vast number of
studies on the US Congress whose unparalleled power has made it impossible to ignore in any
comprehensive analysis of American foreign policy.2 For almost every other democratic
country, however, the study of legislative-executive relations in external relations short of the
use of force is by and large unchartered territory.
Scholarly interest in this topic has been discouraged in several ways. First, in contrast to the
single remaining superpower (USA), the foreign policies of virtually every other country
seem less consequential and naturally attract less scholarly interest. Second, in contrast to the
presidential checks-and-balances system of the USA, the parliamentary systems of European
democracies are characterized by a fusion between government and its parliamentary
majority, with conflicts thus arising mostly along party-political, not institutional lines.3
Third, a viable tradition in political theory holds that the role of parliament does and should
stop at the ‘water's edge’ where an area of executive privileges and responsibilities begin.
Granting parliaments veto powers makes international bargaining more difficult — and can
certainly be expected to work against major reforms to the rules of global or regional
cooperation. Status quo bias in world politics thus increases when the role of the legislature
and other domestic veto-players is more institutionalized. Fourth and related to the previous
point, traditional notions of dividing labor between the sub-disciplines in political science
suggest that comparative politics scholars study legislative-executive relations but stop at the
water's edge where the domain of international relations scholars begins whose natural focus
is on the relations of the executive with other executives or international organisations.
This lack of research is regrettable for various reasons. As suggested above, there is a long
line of thinking arguing that foreign and security policy is (and even should be) dominated by
the executive, with parliaments wielding marginal or at best limited influence. However, the
lack of research beyond the very specific case of US Congress means that we actually do not
know whether such ‘accepted wisdom’ applies to current European democracies. Hence there
is a demand for subjecting this notion of ‘executive drift’ to careful empirical scrutiny.
Previously one could also more plausibly argue that international issues were significantly
1
Bono 2005; Born et al. 2008; Dieterich et al. 2008, 2009; Peters et al. 2013.
An overview of the research on the US Congress is provided in the second section.
3
King 1976; Döring 1995; Strøm et al. 2003.
2
less relevant for voters, thus further reducing incentives for both parliamentary engagement
and for research on the topic. But clearly the world has become much more interdependent
over the past few decades, and particularly in the post-Cold War context. How to manage
global and regional trade, energy and environmental policies, and immigration are now
regularly on the political agendas of democratic countries throughout the world, and such
policies have more explicit distributional consequences for constituencies. International
commitments are also probably more expensive than before, and when considering the
financial uncertainty and budget deficits that characterise most democratic countries,
legislatures have also stronger economic incentives to curb executive discretion in foreign
policy.4 Moreover, higher levels of education and more varied sources of information have
brought about a comparably well-informed and interested public5 that pays more attention to
international questions, thus providing an increasing ‘electoral connection’ to foreign affairs.6
And finally, as studies on parliamentary control of military missions and on the US Congress
demonstrate, a lot can be learnt from these cases for our overall understanding of legislativeexecutive relations.
This collection of papers aims at overcoming the lack of scholarly attention to parliaments
(other than the US Congress) in foreign and security policy. Its ambition is to draw
conclusions about legislative-executive relations in this field on the basis of evidence from
mostly European democracies in various cases of foreign and security policy. Our guiding
question goes to the very heart of legislative-executive relations: which factors allow
parliaments to exercise influence over the executive and, by implication, under which
circumstances does the executive succeed in maintaining or re-capturing executive privilege?
The next section re-visits the debate about executive dominance in foreign affairs, explaining
why we should see more active parliamentary engagement in this area than before. Based on
principal-agent models, the third section contains our theoretical framework which focusses
on both the factors facilitating parliamentary engagement and the multiple instruments MPs
have for becoming involved in foreign affairs.
Weak parliaments and strong executives?
It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive – and
indeed that such bias in favour of the government benefits the country. Decision-making in
foreign policy is characterized by limited openness and secrecy is often presented as integral
to the advancement of national interests. As the efficient conduct of foreign policy, especially
regarding use of force, requires flexibility and fast reactive capacity, parliamentary
4
There is evidence that at least some parliaments spend a considerable amount of time and
other resources on international affairs. For the German Bundestag, for example, Ismayr
(2007: 181-184) reports that one in five plenary debates is about international affairs (many of
them attracting a lot of public attention), and a fifth of legislation concerns international
treaties. No wonder then that parliaments have invested considerable resources into
specialized committees, staff, hearings and field trips that would remain puzzling if it would
not indicate the ambition to enhance the role of parliament in foreign affairs.
5
Norris 2011.
6
Aldrich et al. 2006.
2
involvement may cause unnecessary delays that obstruct the achievement of important foreign
policy goals. Foreign policy also often requires national unity and demands that the major
political parties at least try to build consensus on these issues. These notions apply
particularly to decisions with military implications: “as security policy is taken to require
particularly rapid decision-making and, at times, a high degree of secrecy, it is regarded as the
exclusive domain of the executive and thus lying outside the sphere of parliamentary
control.”7
In Europe it has been commonly understood or almost taken for granted that the logic of
parliamentarism further marginalizes legislatures, with foreign policy viewed as an issue area
where parliaments exercise most delegation to the executive. However, recent work on
parliamentary scrutiny of European Union (EU) affairs has increasingly challenged such
notions of executive drift, and as argued in the introductory section, there is a need to
investigate whether domestic legislatures also manage to influence government activities in
other foreign policy questions.8 The situation is very different in the United States, where the
constitutional system with its checks and balances has stimulated a wealth of research on the
relationship between the president and the Congress in foreign policy. It is worth examining
the main arguments and findings of this research, especially as they inform our theoretical
framework presented in the next section.
The research on Congressional influence in foreign affairs basically consists of two strands of
literature. On the one hand, there is an abundance of publications on the rivalry between
Congress and the president, driven to a large extent by the argument about ‘two presidencies’,
initially proposed by Wildavsky, with the president allegedly enjoying considerably more
discretion in foreign affairs than in domestic matters.9 Much of this research has focused on
various Congressional activities, mainly roll-call voting, to analyze partisan coalitions and the
positions of individual legislators in a variety of foreign policy issues. On the other hand,
primarily international relations scholars, or more precisely those specializing in international
political economy, have extrapolated linkages between domestic politics and international
negotiations, thus also focusing on the role of parliaments in influencing the outcomes of such
global or regional bargaining rounds in trade and security policies.
According to this body of research, Congress seldom questioned executive leadership in
foreign policy from the end of the Second World War until the 1960s. In 1950 President
Truman had simply informed Congress of his decision to enter the Korean War. Congress was
also marginalized during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and in sending troops to Vietnam.
But by all accounts, the role of Congress underwent a dramatic change during the Vietnam
War. From then on, the interventions of Congress have become more detailed and substantive.
7
Peters et al. 2010: 3.
We are not focussing in this project on the role of parliaments in European integration.
However, individual contributions can of course also incorporate the EU into the analysis,
particularly when considering the stronger links between national foreign policies and
European level coordination processes and policy choices.
9
Wildavsky 1966.
3
8
Previous discretion to the president has been replaced by a more assertive Congress, willing
to question and reject executive decisions in foreign economic and security policies. Partisan
consensus, or so-called bipartisanship, gave way to ideological disputes between Democrats
and Republicans, and also an increasing number of legislators became active in foreign policy
questions. In the 1970s the Senate cut off all funds for US military operations in Cambodia,
and Congress succeeded in cutting off aid to South Vietnam. With the 1973 War Powers
Resolution over a presidential veto, Congress asserted its intention to check any future
presidential decisions concerning use of force. Congress also made significant cuts to the
defence budget. In the 1980s Congress took so many decisions contradicting the Reagan
administration that arguably US policy toward Central America was effectively made by the
legislature, not the president. During the 1990s, President Clinton had to readjust his policies
towards Haiti, Bosnia, and Somalia in order to avoid more extensive interference from
Congress.
Indeed, the original drafters of the US constitution had deliberately given Congress
substantial powers in foreign relations, concerning both the declaration of war and trade. 10 As
foreign policy is based less on legislation than domestic policy, the toolkit of Congress with
regard to foreign policy contains a broad array of instruments. In addition to voting on
budgetary items and ratifying international agreements, members of Congress can set ex ante
limits to presidential action, change the rules of delegation in the direction of less executive
discretion, or use public posturing and grandstanding to influence foreign policy. For
example, Congress has introduced stricter reporting requirements or procedures that force the
president to consult Congress prior to decision-making or during international economic
negotiations and military conflicts. Congressional influence is on average stronger under
divided government.11
There are also interesting differences between various categories of foreign policy issues.
Questions about use of force seem particularly reserved for the executive: any effective
parliamentary control must primarily be exerted ex ante, with parliaments themselves also
recognizing that the executive needs a certain level of manoeuvre for the successful conduct
of military missions. The War Powers Resolution provides a good example. It was intended to
curb and constrain president’s right to use force abroad, making sure that the executive
consulted Congress and also got its approval during military operations. According to the
resolution the president can send armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of
Congress or in the case of a national emergency. The president is required to notify Congress
within forty-eight hours of committing armed forces to military action; the resolution also
forbids armed forces from remaining for more than sixty days, with a further thirty-day
withdrawal period, without authorization for the use of military force or a declaration of war
by Congress. No president has acknowledged the constitutionality of the resolution, and
several presidents have disregarded it. President Reagan did so in 1981 when sending the
military to El Salvador; likewise President Clinton in 1999 during the bombing of Kosovo and
President Obama in 2011 when he did not seek Congressional approval for the attack on
10
11
Schlesinger 1989.
For a review of this literature, see Raunio 2014.
4
Libya, arguing that the resolution did not apply to that action. Many voices inside Congress
have also argued that the resolution is too ambitious and goes too far — some issues are
simply just better left to the executive, and the president needs a certain level of discretion for
the efficient conduct of military operations.12
Moving beyond the Congress, Peters and Wagner compared the war powers of forty-nine
legislatures between 1989 and 2004, showing that parliamentary veto power over military
deployments is relatively widespread, albeit still restricted to a minority of countries in their
study. A parliamentary veto right over troop deployments is associated less with general
aspects of the political system (e.g. the distinction between presidential and parliamentary
systems) and more with the specific culture and past experiences of a country, together with
the level of threat it faces. Past experiences of lost wars with heavy casualties appear to
contribute to the institutionalization of parliamentary veto rights over warfare. The best
examples are Japan or Germany, where the experiences of the Second World War produced
strong concerns about misuse of executive freedom and extensive parliamentary involvement
in military issues. Furthermore, the external security environment plays a role, with higher
levels of threat associated with lesser parliamentary powers over troop deployments. 13 Joint
military missions, coordinated primarily by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the
United Nations, and the EU, or collective defense clauses create further problems for
parliamentary involvement. In the context of accession to NATO and the EU, many Central
and Eastern European states relaxed their parliamentary restrictions and abolished their
parliamentary provisos for NATO and EU operations.14 Dieterich et al. examined the
parliamentary war powers of EU member states in relation to degree of participation in the
Iraq War that started in 2003, finding that countries that were involved militarily had ‘basic’
or ‘deficient’ parliamentary war powers, while countries with ‘comprehensive’ war powers
made no contribution beyond logistical support.15 Also analyzing the degrees of participation
in the Iraq War among thirty countries, Mello stressed that parliamentary veto rights alone
were not a sufficient constraint, emphasizing instead the interaction between constitutional
rules and party politics: “under conditions of broad executive majorities or partisan
convergence mandatory parliamentary approval is unlikely to amount to a legislative veto
point.”16
Electoral considerations can also favour executive discretion. Overall, delegation to the
government can be attractive for parliamentarians if foreign relations are not that important
for re-election. And while MPs may vote against trade policies that have negative
distributional consequences for their constituencies, attacking the executive on military issues
12
Auerswald and Cowhey 1997; Howell and Pevehouse 2007; Stevenson 2007.
Peters and Wagner 2011; 2014.
14
Born and Hänggi 2004; Peters and Wagner 2011; 2014. It was precisely this collective
action aspect which made it so surprising when the Turkish Grand National Assembly refused
to ratify the government’s decision in March 2003 to permit the United States to use Turkey
as an air base for its operations in Iraq. See Kesgin and Kaarbo 2010.
15
Dieterich et al. 2009, 2010.
16
Mello 2012: 447.
5
13
is more risky business and can even result in deputies losing their seats. Parliamentarians may
also believe that public criticism of the government might compromise or jeopardize national
security. Hence blame avoidance can seem like a persuasive tactic, at least during military
operations. The executive, on the other hand, may not always prefer maximal discretion.
Governments can ask for ex ante parliamentary approval either because of its positive impact
on military morale or in order to avoid domestic opposition in the course of the conflict.17
Parliamentary involvement in trade policy follows a different logic, concerning both the rules
of parliamentary engagement and the nature of domestic party-political competition. Overall,
foreign trade has much more direct economic distributional consequences, producing winners
and losers inside individual countries. As a result, legislative bargaining and voting about
trade is at least a priori driven considerably more by constituency interests. Analyses of
Congressional decision-making clearly confirm the explanatory power of political economy
theories. Overall these results are in line with the Stolper-Samuelson theorem about the
economic implications of such policies: countries or constituencies that stand to gain from
trade and aid are more supportive of international economic engagement. Legislative support
in Congress and other select parliaments for foreign economic aid, trade, and funds for
international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is more
likely when a legislator comes from a district that is well endowed with a relatively highskilled constituency. Left-leaning legislators are more likely to favour foreign aid and funding
of international financial institutions.18
However, this also implies that parliamentary engagement can be influenced by how issues
are framed domestically – in line with what is termed ‘securitization’ in international relations
literature.19 After all, as the research reviewed in this section indicates, the executive is
normally allowed more discretion in security and military policy than in foreign economic
policy, with such delegation and overall parliamentary support particularly pronounced during
military conflicts. In the US presidents can benefit from framing foreign policy issues as
security or military matters. For example, instruments such as military aid and deployments
and bilateral aid allow the president greater freedom from Congressional constraints than
foreign economic policy issues. Hence the president can be tempted to use military or security
instruments since other types of foreign policy questions are subject to greater legislative
constraints. Presidential influence is also stronger in those areas of the federal budget that deal
with defence and weaker when it comes to foreign policy areas with less immediate national
security connections.20 However, comparing the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on the
legislative–executive relationship in eight countries, the volume edited by Owens and Pelizzo
17
Parliamentary ex ante acceptance of use of force abroad does not automatically produce
favourable domestic conditions for warfare. In the UK, the Iraq War that began in 2003
divided public opinion despite cross-party support in the House of Commons for the
government’s action.
18
E.g. Bailey 2001; Broz 2005; 2008; 2011; Broz and Hawes 2006; Hiscox 2002a; 2002b;
Milner and Tingley 2011; 2012.
19
See Waever 1995; Buzan et al. 1998.
20
Milner and Tingley 2012; Howell and Rogowski 2013.
6
suggests that parliaments are not necessarily weakened during such crisis, with only three
cases — the United States, Great Britain and Russia — providing evidence of executive
empowerment.21
Finally, there are good reasons to expect that parliamentary influence, and the general interest
shown by legislators toward non-domestic matters, will increase in the future. Already in the
late 1970s Manning paid attention to the rise of issues falling somewhere between pure
foreign and domestic policy — or what he referred to as ‘intermestic’ issues.22 As indicated in
the introductory section, the post-Cold War era has witnessed significant global and regional
integration. As a result, an increasing range of issues previously decided nationally, such as
immigration, energy, environment policies or human rights questions, are now subject to
strong external constraints or even delegated to EU or international organisations. Such
policies also have more explicit distributional consequences for constituencies and can be
more expensive than ‘traditional’ or more diplomatic foreign policy issues. Moreover, recent
studies from the United States and Europe also show that foreign and EU policy matter in
terms of elections and vote choice.23 And even in the post-9/11 world, there appears to be
more readiness to debate policy alternatives and to question the policies of governments in
international affairs. In the Congress individual legislators have also become more active and
vocal in foreign affairs, using a variety of parliamentary instruments to shape US foreign
policy, particularly when they disagree with the president about foreign affairs.24
The literature reviewed in this section shows how parliaments have several avenues to
influence foreign policy — from setting ex ante limits to governmental action to holding the
ultimate veto power in treaty ratification. By all accounts, the level of executive drift in
foreign policy has decreased over the decades, perhaps in part through the higher
interdependence of domestic and foreign policy agendas. As foreign affairs have clearer and
more varied domestic distributional consequences, legislators have more incentives to engage
in foreign affairs. At the same time it is nonetheless important to recognize certain real-world
constraints. Essentially none of the studies claim that legislators in the US or elsewhere would
enjoy the same level of information about foreign affairs than members of the executive
branch. Hence there is a persistent problem of informational asymmetry, and just as in
domestic policy, many of the procedural innovations or reforms introduced by parliaments
have been designed to address such asymmetries. The executive also has considerably more
resources to invest in foreign affairs, and in the end it is always the government that
represents the country in international negotiations. With these cautionary remarks in mind
we shall now turn to our analytical framework.
Theoretical framework
21
Owens and Pelizzo 2009; see Scott and Carter 2014.
Manning 1977.
23
E.g. Aldrich et al. 2006; De Vries and Tillman 2011.
24
Carter and Scott 2004; 2010.
7
22
The study of legislative-executive relations is primarily interested in the balance of power
between the parliament and the government, and the ways in which the former can control or
influence the actions of the executive.25 This literature is often couched in terms of
‘parliamentarization’ or – more frequently – ‘de-parliamentarization’, with the latter
particularly pronounced in research about parliamentary involvement in regional (EU) and
global governance.26 Instead of privileging or even endorsing one view over the other at the
very outset of this project, we suggest conceiving of legislative-executive relations as a
continuous process of (re-)calibration of powers and competences in response to
developments within the political system, on the one hand, and in a state’s international
environment on the other hand.
To a large extent, such a process of continuous (re-)calibration of legislative-executive
relations is captured by principal-agent (PA) theory, which is recognized as a highly useful
framework for analyzing the ways in which the parliament can seek to control the
government. This approach conceives of parliament as the principal and the executive as the
agent.27 Its core assumption – that the agent can have interests systematically different from
the principal – is particularly applicable to the case of legislative-executive relations in
foreign affairs: although both share a general interest in the state’s security and welfare, the
executive is more susceptible to the demands and pressures of the international environment
and other executives whereas the legislature emphasizes the need to align foreign policies
with the preferences of the citizens and the public. Indeed, a standard argument in US foreign
policy literature is that the president tends to be more internationalist, preferring more
extensive foreign engagement while legislators, representing geographically small
constituencies, are more parochial in their outlook. The same goes for the fundamental logic
of principal-agent interactions according to which the principal is happy to grant independent
competences to the agent as long as this relieves the principal of the burden to invest the
necessary resources itself. However, the principal is assumed to be alert to the possibility that
the agent privileges its own interest over the principal’s and is prepared to take action in order
to reduce ‘agency slack’ or ‘slippage’. Thus, PA-theory captures cases of both executive
dominance and of tight legislative control.
The principal-agent model is particularly suited to studying legislative-executive relations in
parliamentary systems in which the executive by definition depends on majority support in
parliament.28 Although strict party discipline has led to legislative-executive relations often
being trumped by the relations between the governing majority and the opposition, the latter
has never entirely replaced the former. In addition to the institutional foundations of
25
Martin et al. 2014.
The parliamentarization thesis has been brought forward by Wilzewski 1999; Damrosh
2002; Harnisch 2009. On the de-parliamentarization thesis, see for example Moravscik 1994;
Andersen and Burns 1996; Raunio and Hix 2000.
27
Strøm 2000; Strøm et al. 2003.
28
Strøm 2000; Shugart 2006. The application of PA-models is more complicated in
presidential systems in which both executive and legislative come into power independently
of each other and can both be conceived as agents of the electorate as the true principal.
8
26
preference divergence referred to in the previous paragraph, ideological differences may also
shape relations between the principal and its agent. Even in the case of single-party majority
governments (like those normally in the UK), lack of cohesion inside the ruling party may act
as a significant constraint on the prime minister and her government. And under multi-party
coalition cabinets, the norm in European democracies, the coalition partners most likely have
different preferences, also regarding foreign policy. 29 In such cases the parliamentary groups
of the governing parties, particularly those of the junior parties in the cabinet, have stronger
incentives to curb executive discretion.30
Drawing on these basic arguments of PA-theory and on the previous empirical research
outlined in the previous section, we suggest four working hypotheses:
1) The powers of executive should grow in response to external threats or hostilities.
Historians of state building have identified external threats and hostilities as main driving
forces of executive empowerment. As discussed in the previous section, especially in liberal
democracies ‘securitization’ has been a strategy of executives to sideline established checks
and balances and to claim exceptional competences. We therefore expect a re-calibration of
powers and competences in favor of the executive when the international environment turns
more threatening and foreign policy issues are successfully securitized.
2) Tighter legislative oversight is triggered by lack of trust in the government. This lack of
trust can have two basic sources. First, it can simply result from preference divergence
between the parliamentary majority and the government – or from coalition parties wanting to
keep tabs on one another. Second, it can follow executive failure which includes both the
government’s inability to achieve political aims and, more frequently, its unwillingness to
comply with the rules and procedures set by the principal. Examples of the latter include
(secret) arms exports to country which a parliament explicitly blacklisted.31 The resulting
doubts about the agent’s trustworthiness may lead to stricter reporting requirements and
stronger ex ante control mechanisms. In the US the divisive experience of the Vietnam War
was crucial in bringing about the War Powers Resolution and overall more assertive
congressional behaviour in foreign policy.
3) The level and type of parliamentary involvement in foreign affairs varies between different
categories of questions. In line with research on US Congress, we expect MPs to be more
attentive and also more assertive in questions that have more direct economic and social
distributional consequences for their countries and constituencies and that are also less tied to
security policy. In regional or global negotiations on foreign trade, energy, environment and
immigration there is no single national (security) interest at stake, and hence MPs should be
more willing to publicly criticize the government. In security policy, parliamentary
engagement should be at its peak at the ex ante stage – for example before troops are
29
Kaarbo 2012.
E.g. Müller and Strøm 2000; Strøm et al. 2008; Strøm et al. 2010; Martin and Vanberg
2011.
31
Bauer 2004.
9
30
deployed – with the executive then allowed discretion during the military operation. Thus we
should also find variation between types of parliamentary engagement. In security policy, and
particularly during a conflict, the legislature probably is content with receiving information
from the government (or exchanging information behind closed doors of committees). In nonmilitary questions, on the other hand, MPs should be more likely to use similar instruments as
in domestic policy – plenary speeches, oral and written questions, press releases and other
more public accountability mechanisms.32 Finally, when the issue is not controversial and
without direct distributional consequences (e.g. implementation of development policy or a
geographically distant military conflict), the parliament is probably happy to sit back and just
follow developments based on government reports.
4) Right-wing parties display a greater preparedness to grant discretion to the executive.
Parliaments are party-political institutions, and hence our final hypothesis focusses on the
potential differences between parties of different ideological backgrounds. In the literature on
political parties it is often argued that right-wing parties are more prone to centralization and
leader dominance, with leftist parties in turn placing more emphasis on the rank-and-file and
the extra-parliamentary party organization. That is, right-wing parties are ideologically more
willing to grant discretion to their leaders, while left-wing parties have a tendency for more
inclusive decision-making.33 In foreign policy leftist parties (including the Democrats in the
US) may well be more internationalist, preferring stronger (non-military) international
cooperation34, but when it comes to actual foreign policy decision-making they will be more
favourable to broader domestic participation, including parliamentary engagement.
However, in PA-theorizing, and more broadly in international relations literature, it is also
emphasized that the agent may well benefit from stronger parliamentary constraints,
especially before entering regional or global negotiation rounds or military conflicts. It is of
course predominantly argued that the structural two-level games logic of international
bargaining shields governments from parliamentary control. The executive branch uses
international institutions to insulate themselves from parliaments and other domestic actors,
and to push through or legitimize even unpopular reforms. And beyond such possible strategic
considerations, global or regional ‘multi-level’ governance is by its very nature
intergovernmental, thus empowering governments at the expense of legislatures.35 But
importantly, the two-level game scenario also emphasizes that governments are often
constrained by domestic actors such as legislatures that in the end can unilaterally veto the
32
Burgin 1991; Patten 2005; Martin 2013.
E.g. Duverger 1954; Krouwel 2012.
34
Rathbun 2004; Schuster & Maier 2006; Mello 2012.
35
E.g. Bache and Flinders 2004; Benz and Papadopoulos 2006; Enderlein et al. 2010;
Bellamy 2011. Legislatures have responded through the creation of transnational or regional
parliamentary assemblies and more regular inter-parliamentary cooperation, with European
parliaments especially engaged in a variety of parliamentary networking arrangements. It
appears that the main function of this activity lies in exchange of information, but more
research is needed to establish the actual importance of the various forms of interparliamentary cooperation (Slaughter 2004: 104-130; Marschall 2005; Kraft-Kasack 2008;
Šabič 2008; Crum and Fossum 2013).
10
33
agreements, and that the executive can use this legislative constraint as a bargaining chip.
This latter feature is known as the ‘Schelling Conjecture’36, according to which an executive
whose hands are tied by a domestic ratification constraint such as a parliamentary veto can
negotiate more favorable outcomes than an unconstrained executive.37
Ex ante legislative engagement can also increase the credibility of the negotiators and have a
positive impact on the eventual implementation of the pacts. For example, focussing on
Congressional support for economic sanctions, executive agreements, and food aid, and the
role of national parliaments in the EU, Martin showed that tighter legislative constraints on
the executive result in improved implementation records and can improve the bargaining
position and credibility of the executive.38 More anecdotal evidence also suggests that
executives may sometimes invite the legislative to assume responsibilities previously claimed
by the executive. For example, the Dutch government deferred the decision on a Dutch
military deployment to Uruzgan even though the Dutch parliament has no co-decision powers
over military missions. The deferral resulted from the inability of the coalition parties to agree
on a common government position.39 We are thus also interested in understanding the
circumstances facilitating discretion to the government and those situations where executives
purposefully seek parliamentary constraints for their actions.
Call for contributions
For this collection of papers, we are looking for contributions that analyze legislativeexecutive relations in liberal democracies in the realm of foreign and security policy. We
particularly encourage contributions that compare legislative-executive relations across
countries and/or over time.
The contributions to this collection serve a dual purpose: first, they contribute to mapping
legislative-executive relations across time and space in the realm of foreign and security
policy, especially (but not exclusively) short of the use of military force. This way we aim to
gain a more systematic picture of legislative-executive relations in this important issue-area.
Second, by exploring the driving forces of executive dominance and parliamentary
assertiveness, they contribute to a better theoretical understanding of the dynamics between
the legislature and the executive.
36
Schelling 1960.
Putnam 1988; Evans et al. 1993; Milner 1997; Pahre 2006; Mansfield and Milner 2012.
38
Martin 2000. She also made the interesting observation that the executive may try to evade
or manage to avoid legislative constrains in one-off situations, whereas parliamentary
engagement will be more institutionalized in stable and repeated forms of international
cooperation. Certainly the stronger role of legislatures in controlling international trade and
the EU than in security policy (where no two conflicts are exactly alike) suggests the real-life
existence of such a behavioral pattern.
39
Kaarbo 2012: 109.
11
37
We aim at submitting the collection of papers to a peer-reviewed journal for a special issue.
We plan to have an authors’ workshop in Amsterdam in May or June 2015 to discuss
advanced drafts of all contributions.
If interested in contributing to this project, please send a (working) title, an abstract and a
short bio to tapio.raunio@uta.fi and w.m.wagner@vu.nl by June 30th, 2014.
Bibliography
Aldrich, J.H., Gelpi, C., Feaver, P., Reifler, J. & Sharp, K.T. (2006): Foreign Policy and the
Electoral Connection. Annual Review of Political Science 9, 477–502.
Andersen, S. & Burns, T. (1996): The European Union and the Erosion of Parliamentary
Democracy: A Study of Post-parliamentary Governance. In S. Andersen & K. Eliassen (eds)
The European Union: How Democratic Is It? London: Sage, 227-251.
Auerswald, D. & Cowhey, P. (1997): Ballotbox Diplomacy: The War Powers Resolution and
the Use of Force. International Studies Quarterly 41:3, 508-528.
Bache, I. & Flinders, M. (eds) (2004): Multi-level Governance. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Bailey, M. (2001): Quiet Influence: The Representation of Diffuse Interests on Trade Policy,
1983-1994. Legislative Studies Quarterly 26:1, 45–80.
Bauer, S. (2004): The Role of parliaments in European arms export policy. In J. Mawdsley,
M. Martinelli & E. Remacle (eds) Europe and the Global Arms Agenda: Security, Trade and
Accountability. Nomos: Baden-Baden, 137-147.
Bellamy, R. (ed.) (2011): Symposium on Democracy and New Modes of Governance.
Government and Opposition 46:1.
Benz, A. & Papadopoulos, Y. (eds) (2006): Governance and Democracy: Comparing
National, European and International Experiences. London: Routledge.
Bono, G. (2005): Parliamentary oversight of EU external military operations: The roles of the
British, French and Italian parliaments. In E. Barbé & A. Herranz (eds) The Role of
Parliaments in European foreign policy, Barcelona: Oficina d’informació del Parlament
Europeu, 39-52.
Born, H., Anghel, S., Dowling, A. & Fuior, T. (2008): Parliamentary Oversight of ESDP
Missions. Geneva: Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (Policy Paper No
28).
Born, H. & Hänggi, H. (eds) (2004): The ‘Double Democratic Deficit’: Parliamentary
Accountability and the Use of Force Under International Auspices. Aldershot: Ashgate.
12
Broz, J. L. (2005): Congressional Politics of International Financial Rescues. American
Journal of Political Science 49:3, 479–496.
Broz, J.L. (2008): Congressional Voting on Funding the International Financial Institutions.
Review of International Organizations 3:4, 351–374.
Broz, J.L. (2011): The United States Congress and IMF financing, 1944-2009. Review of
International Organizations 6:3, 341–368.
Broz, J.L. & Hawes, M.B. (2006): Congressional Politics of Financing the International
Monetary Fund. International Organization 60:2, 367–399.
Burgin, E. (1991): Representatives’ Decisions on Participation in Foreign Policy Issues.
Legislative Studies Quarterly 16:4, 521–539.
Buzan, B., Waever, O. & de Wilde, J. (1998): Security: A Framework for Analysis. Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner.
Carter, R.C. & Scott, J.M. (2004): Taking the Lead: Congressional Foreign Policy
Entrepreneurs in U.S. Foreign Policy. Politics and Policy 32:1, 34–70.
Carter, R.C. & Scott, J.M. (2010): Understanding congressional foreign policy innovators:
Mapping entrepreneurs and their strategies. The Social Science Journal 47:2, 418-438.
Crum, B. & Fossum, J.E. (eds) (2013): Practices of Inter-Parliamentary Coordination in
International Politics: The European Union and beyond. Colchester: ECPR Press.
Damrosh, L. (2002): The interface of national constitutional systems with international law
and institutions on using military forces: changing trends in executive and legislative powers.
In C. Ku & H. Jacobsen (eds) Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in
International Law. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 39-60.
de Vries, C.E. & Tillman, E.R. (2011): European Union Issue Voting in East and West
Europe: The Role of Political Context. Comparative European Politics 9:1, 1–17.
Dieterich, S., Hummel, H. & Marschall, S. (2008): Parliamentary War Powers and European
Participation in the Iraq War 2003: Bridging the Divide between Parliamentary Studies and
International Relations. Paper prepared for presentation at the 49th ISA Convention in San
Francisco,
CA,
26-29
March
2008
(available
at
http://paks.uniduesseldorf.de/21_publications.htm).
Dieterich, S., Hummel, H. & Marschall, S. (2009): “Kriegsspielverderber“? Europäische
Parlamente und der Irakkrieg 2003. Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 16:1, 5-38.
Dieterich, S., Hummel, H. & Marschall, S. (2010): Parliamentary War Powers: A Survey of
25 European Parliaments. Geneva: Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces,
Occasional Paper No 21.
Duverger M. (1954): Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State.
New York: Wiley.
13
Döring, H. (ed.) (1995): Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe. New York: St.
Martin’s Press.
Enderlein, H., Wälti, S. & Zürn, M. (eds) (2010): Handbook on Multi-Level Governance.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Evans, P.B., Jacobson, H.K. & Putnam, R.D. (eds) (1993): Double-Edged Diplomacy:
International Bargaining and Domestic Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Harnisch, S. (2009): German Politics Lecture: ‘The Politics of Domestication’: A New
Paradigm in German Foreign Policy. German Politics 18:4, 455-468.
Hiscox, M. J. (2002a): Commerce, Coalitions, and Factor Mobility: Evidence from
Congressional Votes on Trade Legislation. American Political Science Review 96:3, 593–608.
Hiscox, M. J. (2002b): International Trade and Political Conflict: Commerce, Coalitions, and
Mobility. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Howell, W. G. & Pevehouse, J. C. (2007): While dangers gather: Congressional Checks on
Presidential War Powers. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Howell, W.G. & Rogowski, J.C. (2013): War, the Presidency, and Legislative Voting
Behavior. American Journal of Political Science 57:1, 150-166.
Ismayr, W. (2007): Bundestag. In S. Schmidt, G. Hellmann & R. Wolf (eds) Handbuch zur
deutschen Außenpolitik. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 175-192.
Kaarbo, J. (2012): Coalition Politics and Cabinet Decision Making: A Comparative Analysis
of Foreign Policy Choices. University of Michigan Press.
Kesgin, B. & Kaarbo, J. (2010): When and How Parliaments Influence Foreign Policy: The
Case of Turkey’s Iraq Decision. International Studies Perspectives 11:1, 19–36.
King, A. (1976): Modes of Executive-Legislative Relations: Great Britain, France, and West
Germany. Legislative Studies Quartely 1:1, 37–65.
Kraft-Kasack, C. (2008): Transnational Parliamentary Assemblies: A Remedy for the
Democratic Deficit of International Governance? West European Politics 31:3, 534-557.
Krouwel, A.P.M. (2012): Party Transformations in European Democracies. Albany: SUNY
Press.
Manning, B. (1977): The Congress, the Executive and Intermestic Affairs: Three Proposals.
Foreign Affairs 55:2, 306–324.
Mansfield, E.D. & Milner, H.V. (2012): Votes, Vetoes, and the Political Economy of
International Trade Agreements. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Marschall, S. (2005): Transnationale Repräsentation in Parlamentarischen Versammlungen:
Demokratie und Parlamentarismus jenseits des Nationalstaates. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
14
Martin, L. L. (2000): Democratic Commitments: Legislatures and International Cooperation.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Martin, L.W. & Vanberg, G. (2011): Parliaments and Coalitions: The Role of Legislative
Institutions in Multiparty Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martin, S. (2013): Is All Politics Local? The Role-orientation of Irish Parliamentarians
towards Foreign Policy. Irish Political Studies, 28:1, 114-129.
Martin, S., Saalfeld, T. & Strøm, K.W. (eds) (2014): The Oxford Handbook of Legislative
Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
Mello, P.A. (2012): Parliamentary peace or Partisan Politics? Democracies’ Participation in
the Iraq War. Journal of International Relations and Development 15:3, 420-453.
Mello, P.A. (2014): Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict: Military Involvement in
Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming).
Milner, H.V. (1997): Interests, Institutions, and Information: Domestic Politics and
International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Milner, H.V. & Tingley, D.H. (2011): Who Supports Global Economic Engagement? The
Sources of Preferences in American Foreign Economic Policy. International Organization
65:1, 37–68.
Milner, H.V. & Tingley, D.H. (2012): Sailing the Water’s Edge: Where Domestic Politics
Meets Foreign Policy (unpublished manuscript).
Moravcsik, A. (1994): Why the European Union Strengthens the State: Domestic Politics and
International Cooperation. Harvard: Centre for European Studies Working Paper no. 52.
Müller, W.C. & Strøm, K. (eds) (2000): Coalition Governments in Western Europe. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Norris, P. (2011): Democratic Deficit: Critical Citizens Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Owens, J.E. & Pelizzo, R. (eds) (2009): The Impact of the Post-9/11 ‘War on Terror’ on
Executive–Legislative Relations: A Global Perspective. Journal of Legislative Studies 15:2–3.
Pahre, R. (ed.) (2006): Democratic Foreign Policy Making: Problems of Divided Government
and International Cooperation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Patten, J.N. (2005): The Ethnic Connection: The Motivation Behind Senate Foreign Policy
Bill Sponsorship. Politics and Policy 33:1, 61–92.
Peters, D. & Wagner, W. (2011): Between Military Efficiency and Democratic Legitimacy:
Mapping Parliamentary War Powers in Contemporary Democracies, 1989–2004.
Parliamentary Affairs 64:1, 175–192.
15
Peters, D. & Wagner, W. (2014): Executive Privilege or Parliamentary Proviso? Exploring the
Sources of Parliamentary War Powers. Armed Forces & Society (forthcoming).
Peters, D., Wagner, W. & Deitelhoff, N. (2010): Parliaments and European Security Policy:
Mapping the Parliamentary Field. European Integration online Papers (EIoP) 14:1
(http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2010-012a.htm).
Peters, D., Wagner, W. & Glahn, C. (2013): Parliaments at the Water’s Edge: The EU’s Naval
Mission Atalanta. In B. Crum & J.E. Fossum (eds.) Practices of Inter-Parliamentary
Coordination in International Politics: The European Union and beyond. Colchester: ECPR
Press, 195-212.
Putnam, R.D. (1988): Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.
International Organization 42:3, 427–460.
Rathbun, B. (2004): Partisan Interventions: European Party Politics and Peace Enforcement
in the Balkans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Raunio, T. (2014): Legislatures and Foreign Policy. In S. Martin, T. Saalfeld & K.W. Strøm
(eds) The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press
(forthcoming).
Raunio, T. & Hix, S. (2000): Backbenchers Learn to Fight Back: European Integration and
Parliamentary Government. West European Politics 23:4, 142-168.
Šabič, Z. (2008): Building Democratic and Responsible Global Governance: The Role of
International Parliamentary Institutions. Parliamentary Affairs 61:2, 255–271.
Schelling, T.C. (1960): The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Schlesinger, A. (1989): The Legislative-Executive Balance in International Affairs: The
Intentions of the Framers. Washington Quarterly 12, 99–107.
Schuster, J. & Maier, H. (2006): The Rift: Explaining Europe's Divergent Iraq Policies in the
Run-up of the American-Led War on Iraq. Foreign Policy Analysis 2:3, 223-244.
Scott, J.M. & Carter, R.C. (2014): The Not-So-Silent Partner: Patterns of Legislative–
Executive Interaction in the War on Terror, 2001–2009. International Studies Perspectives
(forthcoming).
Shugart, M.S. (2006): Comparative Executive-Legislative Relations, in: Oxford Handbook.
Slaughter, A-M. (2004): A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stevenson, C.A. (2007): Congress at War: The Politics of Conflict since 1789. Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press and Potomac Books.
Strøm, K. (2000): Delegation and accountability in parliamentary democracies. European
Journal of Political Research 37:3, 261–289.
16
Strøm, K., Müller, W.C. & Bergman, T. (eds) (2003): Delegation and Accountability in
Parliamentary Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strøm, K., Müller, W.C. & Bergman, T. (eds) (2008): Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining:
The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strøm, K., Müller, W.C. & Smith, D.M. (2010): Parliamentary Control of Coalition
Governments. Annual Review of Political Science 13, 517-535.
Waever, O. (1995): Securitization and Desecuritization. In R. Lipschutz (ed.) On Security.
New York: Columbia University Press, 46-86.
Wildavsky, A. (1966): The two presidencies. Trans-Action 4, 7–14.
Wilzewski, J. (1999): Triumph der Legislative: Zum
Sicherheitspolitik 1981-1991. Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
17
Wandel
amerikanischer