Toward ‘normal’ politics? Security, parliaments and the politicisation of intelligence oversight in the German Bundestag
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117745683 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Author | Hendrik Hegemann |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117745683
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2018, Vol. 20(1) 175 –190
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148117745683
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Toward ‘normal’ politics?
Security, parliaments and the
politicisation of intelligence
oversight in the German
Bundestag
Hendrik Hegemann
Abstract
Security has often been considered a special kind of politics that presents a particular challenge for
liberal democracy, whether due to securitised states of exception or technocratic risk management.
This article examines whether and how parliaments can be sites of politicisation, moving security
from exceptional and technocratic politics toward more ‘normal’ democratic politics. Moving
beyond the narrow focus on decisions over the use of military force, the examination focuses on
the ‘hard case’ of parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies and provides a case study on
the German Bundestag. Overall, it finds that a strict divide between security and normal politics
is overly simplistic, even when it comes to intelligence. There is evidence for politicisation that
reveals patterns of normal politics through an increasingly institutionalised framework as well
as public, increasingly controversial debates, including a good deal of partisan politics. However,
debates tend to center on institutional and legal issues as well as symbolic skirmishes after
specific events of high visibility, while many restrictions are deeply entrenched in parliamentary
conventions and attitudes.
Keywords
intelligence, normal politics, parliaments, politicisation, securitisation
Introduction
Security has often been considered a special kind of politics that presents a particular
challenge for liberal democracy. A Special Issue on parliaments in this peculiar area not
only reflects this established view but also invites reconsideration. One of the Special
Issue’s key concerns is whether and how parliaments can become sites of politicisation
in the purportedly special security field (Peters and Mello, 2018). This article contrib-
utes to this agenda by examining whether and how parliamentary involvement in
Universität Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany
Corresponding author:
Hendrik Hegemann, Universität Osnabrück, Seminarstraße 33, Osnabrück 49074, Germany.
Email: hendrik.hegemann@uni-osnabrueck.de
745683BPI0010.1177/1369148117745683The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsHegemann
research-article2018
Special Issue Article
176 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(1)
security affairs has moved beyond its special status in democratic politics and toward
more ‘normal’ politics. Large parts of the conceptual literature on security regard secu-
rity as a form of depoliticisation or anti-politics that closes down the political process;
limits the range of legitimate arenas, actors and arguments; and empowers executive
and technocratic actors (Aradau, 2004; Huysmans, 2014). These assumptions prevail
whether due to existential threat constructions that invoke a sense of exception and
enable the adoption of extraordinary measures (Buzan et al., 1998) or bureaucratic
routines of risk management by technocratic ‘security professionals’ (Bigo, 2002). Yet,
the debate has become more complex and now acknowledges a broader variety of, often
quite ‘normal’, security politics (Browning and MacDonald, 2013; Roe, 2012). Recent
research comparing parliamentary security politics during different periods of time as
well as with parliamentary business in other areas also indicates that parliaments often
serve as especially important arenas of rather normal democratic politics (Bright, 2015;
Neal, 2012a). Examples in recent years include the 2014 report on torture practices of
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by the US Senate or the creation of a temporary
committee in the European Parliament (EP) to investigate the role of European coun-
tries in ‘extraordinary renditions’ that presented its report in 2012. This also chimes in
with research suggesting that in the increasingly intrusive security field along the
blurred divide between internal and external security, partisan politics and public con-
testation no longer simply stop at the water’s edge (Hegemann and Kahl, 2016; Raunio,
2018; Wagner et al., 2017) as well as with normative expectations that politicisation is
a precondition for democratisation (Zürn, 2014: 57) and public deliberation and control
are necessary to ‘civilise’ security (Loader and Walker, 2007).
A move toward normal politics would be a key indicator for a role of parliaments as
sites of politicisation. Politicisation is not restricted to expanding political conflict,
including broad-scale societal polarisation and mobilisation outside traditional places of
politics as usual, as it is often conceptualised in current debates on politicisation in
International Relations and European Integration (De Wilde, 2011: 566–567; Grande and
Hutter, 2016: 7). For the role of parliaments in security policy, it rather seems appropriate
to step back and see whether especially sensitive issues are taken out of the sphere of
existential exception and technocratic risk management and brought into the public politi-
cal arena. Hence, politicisation, in a first step, implies ‘making collectively binding deci-
sions a matter or an object of public discussion’ (Zürn, 2014: 27). In the words of Colin
Hay (2007: 79), it means moving an issue from the non-political ‘realm of necessity’ to
the political ‘realm of contingency and deliberation’. This move also seems to be what
Buzan et al. (1998: 29) had in mind when they juxtaposed securitisation to politicisation,
which for them denoted making an issue ‘a matter of choice’ that can be exposed to ‘the
normal haggling of politics’.
Empirically, this article deals with intelligence oversight as a distinct parliamentary
practice. There is a broad literature on executive–legislative relations when it comes to
the use of force and the control of the military (for an overview, see Mello and Peters,
2018). However, the blurring of the traditional internal–external divide means that more
and more issues can impinge upon citizens’ rights and daily lives, which raises questions
of parliamentary control along the full security spectrum. Intelligence is an especially
interesting and challenging area. It is generally seen as an extremely sensitive issue close
to the core of sovereignty and essential for national security, which requires confidential-
ity and is unsuitable to public debate and open control. Peter Gill (2007: 15) calls intel-
ligence oversight ‘perhaps the most demanding of all parliamentary challenges’. Hence,
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