IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/57325.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why parliament now decides on war: tracing the growth of the parliamentary prerogative through Syria, Libya and Iraq

Author

Listed:
  • Strong, James

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Strong, James, 2015. "Why parliament now decides on war: tracing the growth of the parliamentary prerogative through Syria, Libya and Iraq," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 57325, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:57325
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/57325/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. ., 2007. "Modernizing Government," Chapters, in: Paths of Public Innovation in the Global Age, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Oecd, 2008. "Whole-of-Government Approaches to Fragile States," OECD Journal on Development, OECD Publishing, vol. 8(3), pages 179-232.
    3. Diermeier, Daniel & Feddersen, Timothy J., 1998. "Cohesion in Legislatures and the Vote of Confidence Procedure," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(3), pages 611-621, September.
    4. Baum, Matthew A. & Groeling, Tim, 2010. "Reality Asserts Itself: Public Opinion on Iraq and the Elasticity of Reality," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 64(3), pages 443-479, July.
    5. ., 2007. "Government and its Bureaucracy," Chapters, in: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Huber, John D., 1996. "The Vote of Confidence in Parliamentary Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(2), pages 269-282, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    2. Abdul G. Noury & Gérard Roland, 2002. "More power to the European Parliament? [‘Nice try: Should the Treaty of Nice be ratified’?]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 279-319.
    3. Abdul G. Noury & Gérard Roland, 2002. "More power to the European Parliament? [‘Nice try: Should the Treaty of Nice be ratified’?]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 17(35), pages 279-319.
    4. Per Fredriksson & Jim Wollscheid, 2007. "Democratic institutions versus autocratic regimes: The case of environmental policy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 381-393, March.
    5. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624.
    6. James A. Robinson & Ragnar Torvik, 2016. "Endogenous Presidentialism," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 907-942.
    7. Luca Bettarelli & Michela Cella & Giovanna Iannantuoni & Elena Manzoni, 2021. "It’s a matter of confidence. Institutions, government stability and economic outcomes," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(2), pages 709-738, July.
    8. Karthik Reddy & Moritz Schularick & Vasiliki Skreta, 2020. "Immunity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(2), pages 531-564, May.
      • Karthik Reddy & Moritz Schularick & Vasiliki Skreta, 2012. "Immunity," Working Papers 12-17, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
      • Karthik Reddy & Moritz Schularick & Vasiliki Skreta, 2013. "Immunity," Working Papers 13-04, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
      • Karthik Reddy & Moritz Schularick & Vasiliki Skreta, 2013. "Immunity," CESifo Working Paper Series 4445, CESifo.
    9. Micael Castanheira & Benoît Crutzen & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2010. "The Impact of Party Organization on Electoral Outcomes," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 61(4), pages 677-695.
    10. Isa Camyar, 2019. "Parliamentary and semi-presidential advantages in the sovereign credit market: democratic institutional design and sovereign credibility," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(4), pages 383-406, December.
    11. Mícheál O’Keeffe & Alessio Terzi, 2015. "The political economy of financial crisis policy," Working Papers 888, Bruegel.
    12. Michael Becher, 2019. "Dissolution power, confidence votes, and policymaking in parliamentary democracies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 31(2), pages 183-208, April.
    13. Fredriksson, Per G. & Millimet, D.L.Daniel L., 2004. "Comparative politics and environmental taxation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 705-722, July.
    14. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2004. "Constitutions and Economic Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 75-98, Winter.
    15. José Cheibub & Svitlana Chernykh, 2009. "Are semi-presidential constitutions bad for democratic performance?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 202-229, September.
    16. Florian Ade, 2014. "Do constitutions matter? Evidence from a natural experiment at the municipality level," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 367-389, September.
    17. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, "undated". "Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes: What are the Stylized Facts?," Working Papers 189, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    18. Marco Pagano & Paolo F. Volpin, 2005. "The Political Economy of Corporate Governance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1005-1030, September.
    19. Tonja Jacobi, 2009. "The Role of Politics and Economics in Explaining Variation in Litigation Rates in the U.S. States," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(1), pages 205-233, January.
    20. Konstantinos Matakos & Riikka Savolainen & Orestis Troumpounis & Janne Tukiainen & Dimitrios Xefteris, 2024. "Electoral Institutions and Intraparty Cohesion," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(4), pages 883-916.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    foreign policy; military action; parliament; royal prerogative;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • P33 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - International Trade, Finance, Investment, Relations, and Aid

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:57325. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.