Chamber of opportunities: Legislative politics and coalition security policy
| Author | Sibel Oktay |
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117745680 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
research-article2018
Special Issue Article
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
Chamber of opportunities:
2018, Vol. 20(1) 104 –120
© The Author(s) 2018
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Legislative politics and
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117745680
DOI: 10.1177/1369148117745680
coalition security policy
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Sibel Oktay
Abstract
This article adopts a ‘party-political’ approach to studying legislative influence on security policy-
making. It argues that legislative logrolling constitutes a key mechanism for the government to
secure votes in parliament while facilitating the opposition to advance its own interests, especially
when the government requires parliament’s consent for security policy. The article investigates
legislative logrolling in the context of weak executives, specifically looking at minority coalitions
and majority coalitions with ideological and policy divergences. Logrolling is critical for these types
of governments, as their structural and situational weaknesses force them to cooperate with
opposition parties to maintain parliamentary support. Using the Danish and Dutch decisions to
participate in the 2003 Iraq War, and Israel’s 2005 decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza,
this article elucidates the ways in which legislative logrolling between the governing and opposition
parties facilitates security policy-making in parliament.
Keywords
coalitions, Gaza, Iraq war, logrolling, party politics
Introduction
Parliamentarism provides exciting institutional settings in which to study executive-leg-
islative relations. The executive is born from within parliament’s ranks and co-exists with
the opposition in parliament (Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010; Sartori, 1997). Incumbents uti-
lise their parliamentary base to garner formal and informal backing for their policy pro-
posals, while the opposition parties monitor the government’s behaviour. Parliament
simultaneously holds the government to account and serves as the government’s primary
support mechanism for policy-making, legitimation and implementation.
Parliaments strongly influence government performance in domestic politics (Olsen
and Mezey, 1991). When it comes to foreign and security policy, however, the literature
argues that the executive branch dominates policy-making, rendering the legislature’s
Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Springfield, Springfield, IL, USA
Corresponding author:
Sibel Oktay, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Springfield, One University Plaza, PAC 354,
Springfield, IL 62703-5407, USA.
Email: sibelo@uis.edu
Oktay
105
influence weak and ineffective (Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010). Much of this literature
focuses on the government’s role in policy-making and its behaviour abroad, overlook-
ing parliament’s role on security matters pertaining to military involvement, including
participation in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations (Brummer, 2013; Ireland
and Gartner, 2001; Prins and Sprecher, 1999). While recent work on ‘war powers’
brings parliaments closer to the study of security policy (Mello, 2012, 2014; Strong,
2015), studies continue to treat parliament as an institution in and of itself, disregarding
the ways in which the interests and preferences of the political parties in parliament
shape the policy-making process.
In this contribution, I conceptualise parliament as a ‘party-political institution’ (Raunio
and Wagner, 2017) and emphasise the agency of the political party as a key explanation.
Focusing on party-actors in parliament should elucidate the ways in which executive-
legislative relationships take place in security policy-making. I suggest that the governing
and opposition parties in parliament engage in strategic interaction through logrolling,
commonly defined as ‘quid pro quo agreements to exchange support for various items’
(Gerring and Thacker, 2008: 82), but also including policy cooperation in exchange for
office payoffs (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo, 2004; Luebbert, 1986). Although logroll-
ing is frequently observed in public policy-making, I argue that it is a feature of parlia-
mentary politics that travels to foreign and security policy-making.
My contribution thus addresses a guiding question of this special issue (Mello and
Peters, 2018): what are the opportunity structures for parliamentary involvement in secu-
rity policy? When the government is subjected to parliament’s formal or informal ex ante
veto power on proposals pertaining to military action (Wagner et al., 2017), I show that
logrolling ‘allow[s] for the solution of coordination problems’ (Gerring and Thacker,
2008: 82) among parties, facilitating policy-making and implementation.
To illustrate how this strategic interaction takes place, I start by asking, how do gov-
ernment proposals for military action receive support in parliament? Contrary to the
‘parliamentary peace’ thesis (Dieterich et al., 2015), I contend that when parliament is
equipped with voting powers on military action, incumbent parties that govern weak
executives engage in logrolling with the opposition to avoid a veto. Logrolling extends a
lifeline to the incumbent parties and their policy proposals, particularly when they suffer
from structural and situational weaknesses due to the size and mathematical setup of their
governments and the degree of ideological/policy divergences that exist among them. A
‘strong’ parliament can and does support decisions for military action when the incum-
bent pulls the opposition towards its own position by offering side payments in the form
of office or policy perks.
I shed light on the logrolling mechanism in the context of coalition governments
because multi-party governance increases the possibility of observing structural or situ-
ational weaknesses at any point during the government’s lifecycle, necessitating coopera-
tion with the opposition. Assuming that party discipline exists, single-party majority
governments enjoy policy safety in parliament due to their unified seat share and seldom
face defeat in a parliamentary vote (for an exception, see Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010).
Some multi-party arrangements such as grand coalitions also enjoy a stable policy-mak-
ing environment in parliament given the ‘balance of power’ between the constituent par-
ties (Saalfeld, 2010: 84). Many other coalitions, however, fight battles both inside and
outside the executive branch due to a variety of constraints ranging from their seat share
in parliament to the ideological differences among the cabinet parties (Beasley and
Kaarbo, 2014; Lijphart, 1999; Oktay, 2014). As a result, coalition governance often
106
The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(1)
proliferates the range of possible interactions between the executive and legislative
branches, facilitating logrolling. This proliferation not only places the parliamentary
opposition in an advantageous position to exploit the weak spots of the incumbents but
also incentivises coalition actors to collaborate with the opposition to decrease the risk of
policy rejection in parliament.
Using case studies from Denmark, the Netherlands and Israel, I demonstrate that
incumbent parties can garner parliamentary approval for military action by utilising
the opposition’s office and policy preferences to offer them side payments in return
for its vote. The incumbent parties in Denmark and the Netherlands offered such
perks to their counterparts in parliament to secure their support in the run up to the
much contested 2003 war in Iraq. Likewise, in Israel, as the Likud-led majority coali-
tion was disintegrating in reaction to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s proposal to uni-
laterally disengage from Gaza in 2004, Sharon had to provide the opposition parties
with both policy and office payoffs to secure majority support in parliament. In all
three cases, the inherent weaknesses of their governments compelled the incumbent
parties to seek outside support from parliament in exchange for policy and office
payoffs.
The case analyses show that logrolling is a powerful mechanism for incumbent parties
facing weak executives to attract those in the parliamentary opposition to generate sup-
port for contested proposals for military action. This mechanism is observed across and
outside Europe, across different coalitional configurations, and at different stages of the
government’s lifecycle. Furthermore, logrolling takes place even when the proposed mili-
tary action has direct implications for national security as the Gaza disengagement case
shows. Logrolling between the government and the opposition not only facilitates mili-
tary action, but brings both groups of parliamentary actors into the policy-making process
in an issue area where the executive authority is expected to remain supreme.
In what follows, I first provide an overview of the literature on parliamentary politics
and security policy, and discuss the ways in which some coalition arrangements increase
the possibility of logrolling with the opposition. Next, I discuss my case selection strate-
gies and provide brief overviews of the political contexts that led Denmark, the Netherlands
and Israel to consider military action, followed by the analysis. I conclude with a discus-
sion of the results, their...
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