Abstract
The Democratic Peace debate and the 'domestic politics turn' in International Relations more broadly have highlighted the importance of democratic politics in foreign policy decision-making and the use of military force in particular. Yet, some three decades of research into the distinctiveness of liberal democracies' security and defence policies, our understanding of the democratic politics of foreign and security policy, is still limited. Although a large number of case studies have by and again confirmed the importance of a country's domestic politics for understanding decisions to use armed force, we still lack a systematic understanding of the patterns that characterize the politics of using armed force in liberal democracies. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the democratic politics of military missions by zooming in on a key actor in the politics of liberal democracies: political parties. The paper examines empirically a) to what extent the use of force is contested amongst political parties; b) to what extent party political contestation is structured along the established left/right cleavage or along new cleavages pitting cosmopolitan post-materialists against traditional nationalists; c) to what extent the party's political composition of government impacts on actual decisions to use armed force. Based on analyses of party manifesto-, expert survey- and parliamentary roll call vote-data, the paper finds that a) the extent to which foreign and security policy is contested varies considerably across countries and periods, b) party political contestation is first and foremost structured along a left/right dimension in a curvilinear way and only to a lesser extent along a nationalist/cosmopolitan dimension; c) the party's political composition of government has a limited impact on state policy.
Panel: Democratization and Politicization of Military Issues in Europe
Cite this presentation
@inproceedings{eiss-2018-party-political-contestation-of-military-interventions,
author = {Wolfgang Wagner},
title = {Party Political Contestation of Military Interventions},
booktitle = {European Security Studies Conference 2018},
year = {2018},
url = {https://eiss-europa.com/papers/2018-party-political-contestation-of-military-interventions.html}
}