This article argues that there is a need to question whether parliamentary involvement actually leads to the intended effects of increased democratic deliberation and responsiveness. We compare the unintended consequences of parliamentary votes on the use of force in two ‘most-different cases’: Canada and Germany. Despite substantive differences in the formal war powers of their parliaments, we find that military deployment votes on Afghanistan led to less democratic deliberation and responsiveness. Applying rationalist institutionalism, we argue that the deployment votes incentivised major parties to collude together to lessen debate on the Afghan mission, despite increasing public opposition and media attention. Rather than enhancing deliberation and responsiveness, as assumed by proponents of greater parliamentary involvement in military decisions, these parliamentary votes effectively diminished the willingness of parties to debate the mission.
The British and Canadian Parliaments have no legal control over military deployment decisions. Recently, however, governments in both countries have held votes in the House of Commons on expeditionary missions involving combat. In the United Kingdom, this has led to a convention of legislative control of the executive’s prerogative to deploy the armed forces. In Canada, the votes have benefited and enabled the executive, rather than strengthening legislative control. Using Mahoney and Thelen’s (2010) theory of gradual institutional change, this article analyses how and why war prerogative reforms in the United Kingdom and Canada have resulted in different outcomes.
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