Between military efficiency and democratic legitimacy: Mapping parliamentary war powers in contemporary democracies, 1989-20041

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 64, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 175-192

  Peters, Dirk ^a   Wagner, Wolfgang ^b  

^a Leibniz Institut Hessische Stiftung Friedens und Konfliktforschung Peace Research Institute Frankfurt   (Germany)

^b VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 78651287916     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: 14602482     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsq041     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. This paper emanates from the project 'The parliamentary control of military missions in Western democracies' that has obtained funding from the Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung. We gratefully acknowledge this support. Furthermore, we would like to thank Nigel White and Brendan Donnelly for their helpful comments and suggestions as well as Sandra Dieterich, Hartwig Hummel and Stefan Marschall for a stimulating exchange on the topic.
2. H.Müller, 'The Antinomy of Democratic Peace', International Politics, 41, 2004, 494-520.
3. J. Lebovic, 'Uniting for Peace? Democracies and United Nations Peace Operations after the Cold War', Journal of Conflict Resolution, 48, 2004, 910-36.
4. See, among many others, C. Ku and H. Jacobsen, Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in International Law. Cambridge University Press, 2002;
5. H. Born and H. Hä nggi, The 'Double Democratic Deficit'. Parliamentary Accountability and the Use of Force Under International Auspices, Ashgate, 2004;
6. G. Bono, 'National Parliaments and EU External Military Operations. Is There Any Parliamentary Control?', European Security 14, 2005, 203-9;
7. S. Dieterich, H. Hummel and S. Marschall, '" Kriegsspielverderber"? Europäische Parlamente und der Irakkrieg 2003', Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, 16, 2009, 5-38;
8. N. White, Democracy Goes to War. British Military Deployments under International Law, Oxford University Press, 2009.
9. Consecutive Presidents have denied that Congress had any competence to adopt such a resolution, and the US Supreme Court has shied away from adjudicating this dispute. On the US war powers see, among many others, H. Koh, The National Security Constitution, Yale University Press, 1990;
10. L. Fisher, Presidential War Powers, University Press of Kansas, 1995.
11. See S. Dieterich, H. Hummel and S. Marschall, Presidential War Powers, op. cit. note 4
12. H. Born, A. Dowling, T. Fuior and S. Gavrilescu, Parliamentary Oversight of Civilian and Military ESDP Missions: The European and National Levels, Study requested by the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Security and Defence, Brussels, 2007. 29.10.09. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004-2009/ documents/dv/pe348610-/PE348610-en.pdf.;
13. J. Mittag, The Parliamentary Dimension of CFSP/ESDP. Options for the European Convention, Brüssel/Köln, 2003;
14. A. Maillet, Die parlamentarische Kontrolle von Auslandseinsätzen in den Mitgliedsländern der Europäischen Union, Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS), 1999.
15. See the appendix for an overview over this data set. For a comprehensive introduction to the data set and a full account of the various country studies, see W. Wagner, D. Peters and C. Glahn. 'Parliamentary War Powers around the World, 1989-2004. A New Dataset, Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (Occasional Paper 22)', 2010 (forthcoming).
16. L. Damrosh, '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 and H. Jacobsen (eds), Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in International Law, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 52.
17. See L. Damrosh, ibid, note 8, Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in International Law, pp. 39-60;
18. J. Owens and R. Pelizzo, 'Introduction: The Impact of the 'War on Terror' on Executive-Legislative relations: A Global Perspective', Journal of Legislative Studies, 15, 2009, 119-46.
19. Field Marshal Lord Vincent of Coleshill, quoted in House of Lords (Select Committee on the Constitution), Waging War. Parliament's Role and Responsibility, Volume I: Report, The Stationery Office, 2006, p. 21.
20. K. Rasler and W. Thompson, Puzzles of the Democratic Peace. Theory, Geopolitics, and the Transformation of World Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 44.
21. C. Lord, 'Is there a role for parliamentary participation in European security co-operation?', in D. Peters, W. Wagner and N. Deitelhoff (eds), The Parliamentary Control of European Security Policy, RECON Report No. 6, ARENA 2008, pp. 29-50.
22. In a similar vein, a recent study found that the German Bundestag has made deployment decisions within very short time periods if necessary. The average time for the entire parliamentary process has been 12.8 days which does not seem excessively long in the face of lengthy negotiations in the United Nations and possibly also in NATO or the EU on whether and under what condition a mission should take place in the first place. See N. von Ondarza and M. Klemm, 'Europeans in Afghanistan. Decision-making Processes in Britain, France and Germany', Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Potsdam, 9-11 September 2009.
23. Quoted from House of Lords (Select Committee on the Constitution), Waging War. Parliament's Role and Responsibility, Volume I: Report, The Stationery Office, 2006, p. 20.
24. I. Kant, 1970 [1795], 'Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch', in H. Reiss (ed.), Kant's Political Writings, Cambridge UP, 1970, p. 100.
25. D. Reiter and A. Stam, Democracies at War, Princeton UP, 2002.
26. R. M. Siverson, 'Democracies and War Participation: In Defense of the Institutional Constraint Argument', European Journal of International Relations 1, 1995, 481-9;
27. S. Watts, 'Air War and Restraint: The Role of Public Opinion and Democracy', in M. Evangelista, H. Müller and N. Schörnig (eds), Democracy and Security, Routledge, 2008, pp. 54-5.
28. See S. Dieterich, H. Hummel and S. Marschall, Democracy and Security, op. cit., note 4.
29. We owe this point to one of the reviewers. For a discussion of the House of Commons and the Iraq War cf. N. White, Democracy Goes to War. British Military Deployments under International Law, Oxford University Press, 2009, 238-68.
30. This section draws on W. Wagner, D. Peters and C. Glahn 2010: Parliamentary War Powers around the World, 1989-2004. A New Dataset, Geneva: Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (Occasional Paper 22), forthcoming.
31. H. Hummel and S. Marschall, How to Measure Parliamentary War Powers, Düsseldorf: Paks Working Paper 3, 2007.
32. H. Hä nggi, 'The Use of Force under International Auspices: Parliamentary Accountability and "Democratic Deficits"', in H. Born and H. Hänggi (eds), The 'Double Democratic Deficit'. Parliamentary Accountability and the Use of Force under International Auspices, Ashgate, 2004, p. 14.
33. The POLITY IV dataset is widely employed in International Relations and Comparative Politics research to measure the 'democraticness' of a country. It includes an 11-point democracy scale (0-10) and an 11-point autocracy scale (0-10). A country's regime type ('combined POLITY score') is then measured by subtracting its autocracy score from its democracy score yielding a 21-point scale (210 to +10). +9 still is a value that is assigned only to countries whose democratic character is not in doubt. The POLITY dataset does not contain information on states with a population of less than 500,000. Consequently, very small countries are excluded from ParlCon by default. The POLITY project was founded by Ted Gurr in the 1970s. POLITY IV is located at the Center for Systemic Peace and George Mason University and directed by Monty G. Marshall. Our selection of cases is based on the 2004 version of POLITY IV that was the most recent one available at the start of our project. Subsequent updates have not been taken into account. The POLITY IV data and a codebook can be found at http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm (last accessed July 2010).
34. For a comprehensive presentation of the data set including all country profiles, see W. Wagner, D. Peters and C. Glahn 2010: Parliamentary War Powers around the World, 1989-2004. A New Dataset, Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (Occasional Paper 22), forthcoming.
35. Depending on the year under investigation (and, as a consequence, on the overall number of democracies included in our sample for the respective year), figures range from 30% (in 1992) to 38% (in 1990 and 2000).
36. The only exception is Chile, where formerly uncontested deployment rules were violated in 2004. Spain introduced a deployment law in 2005, i.e. after the period under study here. In 2000, a new article was introduced to the Dutch constitution obliging government to inform parliament in advance of any military mission. The new article codified a practice that had been established in the late 1980s.
37. Although attempts have been made to elevate regional organisations to the level of the UN with the power to legitimise military missions under international law, the majority opinion still reserves this privilege to the UN (see, among others C. Gray, International Law and the Use of Force, third edn., Oxford University Press, 2008). Remarkably, non-European countries have refrained from granting regional organisations such as the Organisation of American States a similar status in their deployment laws.
38. Remarkably, arguments referring to the moral authority of an organisation with exclusive democratic membership have been used to justify the use of force but hardly to justify the exemption from ex ante parliamentary control. This is why the table in the appendix lists them as countries in which no prior parliamentary approval is required. P.L. 93-148. The French constitutional reform of 2008 also introduced a provision that requires parliamentary approval after 30 days into a deployment but this reform lies outside the scope of our data set which ends 2004.
39. L. Damrosh, '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 and H. Jacobsen (eds), Democratic Accountability and the Use of Force in International Law, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 52.
40. Because our data set ends in 2004, the new Spanish deployment legislation that gives the Cortes a veto power over military deployments remains outside the scope of our analysis.
41. P. Dunay, 'Hungary', in H. J. Giessmann (ed.), Security Handbook 2004, Nomos, 2004, pp. 158-9.
42. See Speech of President Parvanov (in Bulgarian). 20.12.08. www.president.bg/zakonod.php?id=572&st=0; translation by Filip Gelev.
43. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 13.12.06.
44. See 'Staatssekretä r fordert frühes Votum zum Einsatz', Frankfurter Rundschau, 14.12.06;
45. Bundeswehreinsatz soll Parlamentssache bleiben', Frankfurter Rundschau, 11.12.06.
46. See also 'Unser Hauptinteresse ist Europa', Interview mit dem CSU-Außenpolitiker Silberhorn, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 29.01.07.
47. Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law, article 3, para 2, quoted from W. Wagner, D. Peters and C. Glahn, 2010: Parliamentary War Powers around the World, 1989-2004. A New Dataset, Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (Occasional Paper 22), forthcoming.
48. S. Anghel, H. Born, A. Dowling and T. Fuior, 'National Parliamentary Oversight of ESDP Missions', in D. Peters, W. Wagner and N. Deitelhoff (eds), The Parliamentary Control of European Security Policy, RECON Report No 6, ARENA, 51-76, 2008.
49. T. Noetzel and B. Schreer, Spezialkrä fte der Bundeswehr, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2006.
50. P. Singer, The Private Military Industry and Iraq. What have we learnt and where to next?, Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2004, p. 4.
51. D. Avant, 'Private Security', in P. Williams (ed.), Security Studies, Routledge, 2008, p. 449.