Why Parliament Now Decides on War: Tracing the Growth of the Parliamentary Prerogative through Syria, Libya and Iraq
| Author | James Strong |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-856X.12055 |
| Published date | 01 November 2015 |
| Date | 01 November 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
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doi: 10.1111/1467-856X.12055
B J P I R : 2 0 1 5 V O L 1 7 , 6 0 4 – 6 2 2
Why Parliament Now Decides on War:
Tracing the Growth of the
Parliamentary Prerogative through
Syria, Libya and Iraq
James Strong
Research Highlights and Abstract
•
Precedents set in debates over Iraq, Libya and Syria established a new parliamentary
prerogative, that MPs must vote before military action can legitimately be launched.
•
Tony Blair conceded the Iraq vote to shore up Labour back-bench support, because
he was convinced he would win, and because he was unwilling to change course
regardless.
•
David Cameron allowed a vote on Libya because he believed parliament should have
a say, because UN support meant he was certain to win, and to gain plaudits for not
being Blair.
•
Cameron then had to allow a vote on Syria despite its greater political sensitivity. He
mishandled the vote, and lost, and felt constrained to pull out of mooted military
action.
•
Collectively these three precedents comprise a new constitutional convention, which
will constrain the executive in future whether the law is formally changed or not.
Parliament now decides when Britain goes to war. The vote against military intervention in Syria
on 29 August 2013 upheld a new parliamentary prerogative that gradually developed through
debates over earlier actions in Iraq and Libya. While the academic community and much of the
British political elite continue to focus on the free rein granted to prime ministers by the historic
royal prerogative, this article argues it is critically constrained by its parliamentary counterpart. It
traces the way political conditions, individual policymaker preferences, and the conventional nature
of the unwritten British constitution allowed parliament to insert itself into the policymaking
process without the consent of successive governments. It concludes that MPs will in future expect the
right to vote on proposals to deploy the armed forces overseas, and that the legitimacy of military
action will depend on the government winning such a vote.
Keywords: Parliament; royal prerogative; military action; foreign policy
I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of
parliament to decide on war (Cook 2003, 190).
Edward Miliband: ... there having been no motion passed by this House
tonight, can the prime minister confirm to the House that he will not use
the royal prerogative to order the UK to be part of military action ...
The Prime Minister: I can give that assurance ... (Hansard 2013,
1555–1556).
© 2014 The Author. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014
Political Studies Association
W H Y PA R L I A M E N T N O W D E C I D E S O N WA R
605
Parliament now decides when Britain goes to war. In August 2013 the House of
Commons blocked British participation in military action against the Assad regime
in Syria. The result surprised many observers. It should not have done. Parliament
has grown more assertive on issues of foreign affairs in recent years, particularly
those involving major military deployments. Successive prime ministers have
refused to give up the legal authority to deploy the armed forces, yet they have
allowed a political convention to develop granting parliament a veto over actual
deployment decisions. The House of Commons votes over Iraq in 2003 and Libya in
2011 were legally unnecessary, but they were central to the legitimacy of both
actions, indeed to the legitimacy of British military action more generally (see
Packenham 1970 on legitimacy). They established precedents that constrained
David Cameron to obey the will of the House of Commons in 2013 regardless of his
formal freedom to act without its support. His capitulation confirmed what several
MPs and ministers have long suggested, that there is now in place a political
convention, a new ‘parliamentary prerogative’ governing the use of force overseas
that sits alongside and qualifies the legal position. A future parliament, differently
comprised, may yet decide to give this power up (Bogdanor 2009, 224). But absent
a parliamentary change of heart, no future British military deployment will achieve
domestic legitimacy without MPs’ express support.
In this article I trace the parliamentary prerogative’s origins in debates over military
action in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I draw from two main research traditions to inform
my analysis. Firstly, I apply ideas drawn from the broader foreign policy analysis
literature. In the aftermath of the Cold War, democratic leaders can no longer point
to a single over-arching bogeyman to justify armed adventures overseas (Everts
2000, 178; Shapiro and Jacobs 2000, 243; Entman 2004, 2–3). Al Qaeda offers a
useful foil, but the controversy over Iraq left the ‘war on terrorism’ narrative
critically undermined. It never achieved the levels of linguistic hegemony or cul-
tural resonance the Cold War possessed (see Jackson 2005). Leaders must work far
harder now than in earlier generations to convince sceptical public and political
opinion of the case for the discretionary, ‘anticipated’ conflicts that dominate the
post-modern international landscape (Hennessey 2007, 347). Making the case for
war, in other words, is now an essential component of waging war. This is why
Krebs and Jackson concluded that ‘rhetoric is central to politics, even when politics
takes the form of war’ (Krebs and Jackson 2007, 35–36). It is why Michalski and
Gow observed that ‘winning is about narrative, not sheer brute force’ (Michalski
and Gow 2007, 198). It is why, as far as Joseph Nye is concerned, military success
‘depends not only on whose army wins, but also on whose story wins’ (Nye 2009,
160–163; 2011a, 19; 2011b, 18). Reality is important still, in Baum and Groeling’s
formulation, but ‘both rhetoric and reality matter’ (Baum and Groeling 2010, 445).
Rhetoric shapes how reality is interpreted, and that interpretation matters, not least
to foreign policy legitimacy. Before a democratic government can order its country
to fight, then, it has to argue its case in public, and it has to win. Critically, and in
contrast to earlier wars, it is now clear when states face the prospect of using force
that ‘doing nothing is a choice’, as Cameron admitted over Syria (Hansard 2013,
1034, emphasis added).
Secondly I refer to the specific literature on foreign policymaking in Britain, domi-
nated by two main theoretical models developed in the broader British politics field.
© 2014 The Author. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2014 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2015, 17(4)
606
J A M E S S T R O N G
In the Westminster model, foreign policy is determined in top-down fashion, and
parliament is a minor player, warranting, for example, no more than a single brief
mention in Jamie Gaskarth’s recent analysis (Gaskarth 2013, 28; see also Norton
2013 for a study of parliament which does not mention the deployment power at
all). Steven Kettell’s study of the Iraq war, similarly, emphasised the ‘centralisation,
hierarchy and elitism’ that he sees underpinning the British political system (Kettell
2006, 2–3). For adherents of the Westminster model parliament is ‘weak and
reactive: a legislature that chooses never to bite, a tiger muzzled by partisan politics’
(Heffernan 2005a, 68). While its members may speak out from time to time,
parliament is dominated by MPs loyal to the government of the day. It has no
constitutional role in foreign policymaking. The latest House of Commons Library
report on the subject states explicitly that the prime minister directs the military,
and is not obliged to consult parliament before doing so (Mills 2013, 3). While some
studies note that the vote over the Iraq war in March 2003 set a precedent for
parliament to have a greater role (Bogdanor 2009, 225), they usually conclude that
the absence of supplementary legislation renders the precedent inert (Peters and
Wagner 2013, 16). The differentiated polity model, by contrast, sees policymaking
more in terms of negotiation and coalition-building (Rhodes 1997; see also Marsh
et al. 2001). The British executive, according to this tradition, is constrained by
institutional and political structures (Gaskarth 2013, 47). Whatever the law might
say about the power to take Britain to war, without institutional and political
support no government can act entirely as it might wish (Joseph 2013, 1). Parlia-
ment backed intervention in Iraq and Libya, but blocked action in Syria. Only on
the latter occasion did it divide primarily along partisan lines, and even then some
government MPs rebelled.
Ultimately I find the differentiated polity model more useful in explaining the
growth of the parliamentary prerogative power, but I begin in a traditional vein by
discussing the Westminster model, focusing on the legal basis of the power to
deploy the armed forces. I note parliament’s exclusion from formal decision-
making, while recognising that prerogative powers can quite easily be amended or
legislated away. I proceed through a detailed historical account to show the gradual
development over the past decade of a clear link between parliamentary approval
for the use of force, and its domestic political legitimacy. Building on the core
insights of the differentiated polity model, I highlight three historically-contingent
factors, two derived from the foreign policy analysis literature, and one specific to
the British case, which combined...
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