Their book’s project is to compare
three types of democratic legislatures by how well or poorly they oversee
military and security policy. Do Westminster parliaments, or Congressional legislatures,
or what they call “consensual” parliaments (generally, European legislatures that
have added proportional representation to Westminster structures) do this
important job best? Being political scientists, they develop an elaborate testing
model.
Long story short, the whole
investigation goes sideways. After a huge effort in travel, interviewing, and the
assembly and handling of masses of data, they have to conclude: it doesn’t
matter a toss.
They find some Westminster
parliaments perform their oversight functions well, and others badly. The
US Congress and similarly structured governments elsewhere have sometimes done
oversight well, but sometimes not. After comparing how the European parliaments
have done, they throw up their hands. “Oversight
levels appear to be unrelated to the democratic regime type” (121), and “similar
types of democracies do not always have similar patterns of legislative
behaviour.” (147)
Overseen or
Overlooked? is an institutional study that concludes that
institutional form is not really that important. Two hundred and fifty pages in, they start to
think that “micro institutional rules
and conventions matter a great deal in strengthening or weakening legislative
oversight.” Political culture matters!
No matter a legislature’s institutional form,
“Oversight improves when the governing party members are less beholden to their
leaders and act more independently,” they start to think. For instance, “Canadian
MPs are tightly disciplined, whereas UK MPs are loosely disciplined and known
for the independence." And so: “parliamentary
oversight is more vigorous in the latter despite the similarity in legislative
form.” Ditto for the Congressional examples.
They even grasp, in looking closely at the
European legislatures that they dub “consensual” (because they rely on
proportional representation systems that produce coalitions of many small
parties), that consensus is often not reached. Indeed, legislators there, often
appointed by parties rather than directly elected, are tightly controlled by
party leadership and as limited to point-scoring in partisan wrangles as their
counterparts elsewhere. (Have we seen much sign of
‘consensus’ among German or Italian or Polish or Belgian or Hungarian legislators
in recent times? The whole presumption is unfounded.)
The theme their study might have pursued is expressed in one sentence. They come to conclude that “Executive control turns, in part, on party discipline” (258) and then jump quickly to the recommendation that , defence committees should try to operate more independently of government whatever the legislative system.
This whole subject cries out for the kind of
intense investigation given to their fruitless comparison of legislative structure.
But they toss off this conclusion with vague handwaving about legislators
putting their desire for ministerial office ahead of their oversight roles. What
is really needed is close examination of the various ways that parties select their leaders
either encourage or discourage independence of legislators. And somehow that question never seems to interest political scientists.
I was reminded of all this by a recent BlueSky post by one of the contributors, Philippe Lagassé, who offers Canadians a primer on how Parliament really works, particularly in military decision-making. The constitutional theory is elegantly laid out: Lagassé rightly establishes that the legislature is there “to hold the executive to account for the decisions it makes,” not “to expect a say in the matter.” He seems faintly irritated that Canadians don’t understand this.
But for all Canadians who would rightly respond: “But it does not hold to account; has not in decades! MPs are driven like sheep,” he offers not a word about all the (“microinstitutional”) ways that party discipline has highjacked parliamentary accountability. He has missed the point.
From the American Senate and House (now reduced to servility by the Republican loyalty to Trump) to Britain (how did Boris last ten minutes?) and to the European parliaments (how did a loyal parliamentary bloc make Orban an elective authoritarian?), to faraway New Zealand, the global plague of legislative failures to confront party machines that are increasingly skilled and determined in obliterating parliamentary oversight should be an urgent question for analysis.
Somehow political scientists find the whole subject unworthy of close study.
