Challenging Executive Dominance: Legislatures and Foreign Affairs [Paperback]

Bringing together scholars from Europe and North America, this book examines the engagement of legislatures across the world in foreign and security policy. The articles are specifically chosen to cover the whole range of foreign affairs questions from crisis management and military missions, arms trade, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union (EU), international energy agreements, to international trade negotiations. Drawing on a principal-agent framework, the book challenges the conventional wisdom of executive autonomy in foreign affairs, with parliaments using multiple ex ante and ex post instruments to monitor, oversee and control governments in external relations. Moving beyond the politics stops at the waters edge image, the articles highlight the role of party-political contestation instead of consensus in the name of national interest structuring parliamentary debates and decision-making in this increasingly politicized issue area. Considering the lack of research on parliamentary participation in foreign affairs beyond the specific case of the U.S. Congress, the book will also contribute to theory building and will deepen our understanding of legislative-executive relations.  The chapters originally published as a special issue in West European Politics.

1. Towards parliamentarisation of foreign and security policy? Tapio Raunio and Wolfgang Wagner  2. The party politics of legislativeexecutive relations in security and defence policy Wolfgang Wagner, Anna Herranz-Surrall?s, Juliet Kaarbo and Falk Ostermann  3. Legislatures and civilmilitary relations in the United States and the United Kingdom David P. Auerswald  4. Precedents, parliaments, and foreign policy: historical analogy in the House of Commons vote on Syria Juliet Kaarbo and Daniel Kenel£i