Is there a parliamentary peace? Parliamentary veto power and military interventions from Kosovo to Daesh

Abstract

This article studies the effect of parliamentary involvement on security policy. Building on Democratic Peace Theory, it examines whether democracies with a parliamentary veto power are indeed less likely to participate in military interventions, than democracies without such a veto power, ceteris paribus. By studying patterns of participation across 25 to 35 countries in five military missions, this paper finds modest evidence for such a parliamentary peace and suggests that it depends on the character of the military mission in question. If a mission is framed as a test case of alliance solidarity, as was the case with OEF and the Iraq War, domestic institutional constraints can be trumped by alliance politics. If, however, countries enjoy more discretion in deciding on the use of force, domestic constraints such as parliamentary war powers have a tangible impact on government policy.

National restrictions in multinational military operations: A conceptual framework

“…Clearly, there is a need for further systematic-comparative work to broaden the basis of our understanding of the politics of MMOs. For example, recent empirical studies indicate that parliamentary veto power has only a modest effect on conflict participation (Wagner, 2018) and that parliamentary involvement can yield unintended consequences that run counter to normative aims (Lagassé & Mello, 2018). Moreover, several Central and Eastern European states adapted their constitutional frameworks during their NATO accession.…”

“…In their study of Europeans' involvement in the Iraq War, Dieterich et al (2015) formulate a "parliamentary peace" hypothesis, according to which countries with wide-ranging parliamentary war powers abstain from military participation under the precondition of a war-averse public. Recently, Wagner (2018) tested this argument on a broader empirical basis and found modest evidence in favor of a parliamentary peace.…”

When does politics stop at the water’s edge? A QCA of parliamentary consensus on military deployment decisions

“…Considering the former, we presume governments with a large majority of parliamentary seats to take more contested deployment decisions than governments that control a smaller share of parliamentary seats. Prior research has demonstrated that minority governments will search for support among opposition parties, will be more hesitant to put controversial decisions to a vote, and are less likely to resort to the use of force than majority governments (Prins and Sprecher, 1999;Oktay, 2018;Wagner, 2018). Moving away from the minority-majority dichotomy, Mújica and Sánchez-Cuenca (2006) found that the levels of parliamentary consensus varied according to the size of the government relative to the size of the opposition, while the analysis of Tuttnauer (2018) showed that surplus coalitions take more controversial decisions.…”

The Existence of Courts and Parliaments in Regional Organizations: A Case of Democratic Control?

“…These studies generally point to the important constraining function of domestic parliaments in decisions over international interventions. They find that parliaments with more extensive "war powers" are significantly less likely to agree to foreign military interventions (Dieterich et al 2014;Wagner 2018). Given the crucial role of parliaments in domestic settings, the more generalized expectation that democratic states externalize parliamentary organs as institutions of democratic control is reasonable.…”