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Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War

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Abstract

This paper seeks to explain democracies’ military participation in the Iraq War. Prior studies have identified institutional and partisan differences as potential explanatory factors for the observed variance. The interaction of institutions and partisanship, however, has gone largely unobserved. I argue that these factors must be analysed in conjunction: institutional constraints presume actors that fulfil their role as veto players to the executive. Likewise, partisan politics is embedded in institutional frames that enable or constrain decision-making. Hence I suggest a comparative approach that combines these factors to explain why some democracies joined the ad hoc coalition against Iraq and others did not. To investigate the interaction between institutions, partisanship and war participation I apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The analysis reveals that the conjunction of right-of-centre governments with an absence of both parliamentary veto rights and constitutional restrictions was sufficient for participation in the Iraq War. In turn, for countries where the constitution requires parliamentary approval of military deployments, the distribution of preferences within the legislature proved to be decisive for military participation or non-participation.

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Notes

  1. See the presidential address available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/08/31/remarks-president-address-nation-end-combat-operations-iraq (accessed 23 January, 2011).

  2. For a collection of essays on the political implications of the Iraq War, see Danchev and MacMillan (2005). Regarding the economic consequences of the war, see Stiglitz and Bilmes (2008).

  3. Opinion polls conducted in January and December 2003 indicated strong public opposition to the war across European countries (Eurobarometer 2003; Gallup 2003).

  4. Schuster and Maier (2006: 232) focus on political support as their dependent variable but suggest that the argument holds, to some extent, also for military participation.

  5. The theoretical utility of this distinction has been questioned, since most dyadic theories imply the existence of monadic mechanisms, even though empirical support for the monadic claim has been inconclusive (cf. Jervis 2005: 19).

  6. This applies even more to cases of external intervention into ‘new wars’. For a recent assessment of the new war thesis, see Heupel and Zangl (2010). An overview of the debate about a transformation of war is provided in Mello (2010).

  7. However, despite important differences one should be careful not to reify the distinction between ad hoc coalitions and military operations under the auspices of international organisations. In this context, it can be helpful to understand ad hoc coalitions as ‘spontaneous institutions’ that comprise specific sets of conventions (cf. Daase 1999).

  8. The first scope condition leads to the exclusion of Cyprus, Iceland, Luxembourg and Malta, whereas the second condition affects Israel and Turkey.

  9. For current reviews of the literature on casualty aversion and the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, see Baum and Potter (2008) and Smith (2005).

  10. Under specific circumstances governments can have incentives to downplay their country's military involvement. Hence the coding is not based solely on self-description, for example, by countries’ defence departments, but also takes into account foreign sources and external reports.

  11. For a chronology of the invasion and occupation phases, see Gordon and Trainor (2006).

  12. In legal terms, SCR 1546 of 8 June, 2004 ended the occupation on 30 June, 2004, with the Interim Government of Iraq assuming ‘full authority and responsibility’.

  13. This coding reflects the presence of a basic veto right. In Italy its effectiveness is limited by contending constitutional interpretations. The Japanese Diet is restricted to an ex post authorisation of military deployments that applies after a period of 20 days has passed (Wagner et al. 2010: 67).

  14. The coding refers to the situation in 2002–2003. Since then the legal situation has changed in some countries. Spain, for instance, introduced a parliamentary veto right in 2005 with the Ley Orgánica de la Defensa Nacional.

  15. Austrian deployment provisions are contained in the Bundesverfassungsgesetz of April 21, 1997 (I, 1-2). For Ireland, see the Defence Act of 1954 and several amendments made through 1983. These are available at http://www.attorneygeneral.ie/slru/restatements.html (accessed 10 July, 2011).

  16. I thank Andrea Volkens for pointing out this approach to me.

  17. For presidential systems, the executive position is calculated on the basis of the president's party. In turn, parliament's position refers to the lower house.

  18. This measure seems more appropriate for decisions on the use of force than, for instance, a simple count of the legislative majority. For a similar measure to the one applied here, see Powell (2000: 173).

  19. Table A.2 (in the online appendix) lists the resulting CMP values and the calibrated fuzzy scores for partisanship.

  20. The respective formulae are: ConsistencyNC=∑[min(X i , Y i )]/∑(Y i ); CoverageNC=∑[min(X i , Y i )]/∑(X i ).

  21. It was previously advised to exclude necessary conditions from the truth table analysis (Ragin 2009: 110). However, since conditions can be both necessary and sufficient and also form combinations that are necessary and/or sufficient, it appears reasonable to include them in the analysis. Ragin seems to agree with this view (Mendel and Ragin 2011: 24).

  22. Version 2.5 of fsQCA was used. The software is available at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cragin (accessed 12 January, 2011).

  23. For this article, I focus on the complex solution term as a conservative estimate that makes least assumptions.

  24. I decide against including row six, as it would lower the overall consistency but add only a single case to the minimisation procedure. Furthermore, Norway holds a low membership (0.55) in the respective configuration and thus cannot yield much inferential leverage for this specific combination of conditions.

  25. The result differs from the theoretical model in that it does not include a rightist executive in the minimised formula. However, an examination of the cases reveals that five out of the seven countries in this path comprise unified rightist governments.

  26. The Czech Republic and Hungary also hold membership in Path 3, but their military contribution was restricted to non-combat units (see Table 1).

  27. Paths for military participation and non-participation are numbered in consecutive order.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Julian Brückner, Christopher Daase, Gary Goertz, Ellen Immergut, Mikkel Runge Olesen, Charles Ragin, Ingo Rohlfing, Claudius Wagemann, Wolfgang Wagner and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments. Earlier versions were presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, St Gallen, the 6th ECPR General Conference, Reykjavik and seminars at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. I thank participants in these forums for their suggestions and the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences for financial support.

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Mello, P. Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War. J Int Relat Dev 15, 420–453 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2012.11

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