Bringing democracy back in: The democratic peace,parliamentary war powers and European participation in the 2003 Iraq War

Abstract

Referring to Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’, research on the democratic peace is based on the assumption that citizens’ preferences are fully and directly transferred into actual security policy by democratic leaders. However, democratic responsiveness in foreign politics is a more complex issue. Parliaments are usually key institutions with regard to ensuring responsiveness of democratic leaders both by authorizing political decisions and by monitoring executive policy-making and implementation. However, in several democracies military security policy-making is understood as part of an ‘executive prerogative’. This article examines the role of parliaments in providing for democratic responsiveness of security policy-making. We test the hypothesis that, depending on the extent of their ‘war powers’, parliaments do effectively limit the scope of executive security policy if and when public opinion strongly opposes military action. The decision-making of 25 European democracies on military participation in the 2003 Iraq War serves as a test. Testing the hypothesis we find that countries with strong parliamentary war powers tended to be significantly less involved in the military intervention against Iraq. However, several puzzles of a theory of ‘parliamentary peace’ remain to be addressed by future research.