Chamber of opportunities: Legislative politics and coalition security policy

Abstract

This article adopts a ‘party-political’ approach to studying legislative influence on security policy-making. It argues that legislative logrolling constitutes a key mechanism for the government to secure votes in parliament while facilitating the opposition to advance its own interests, especially when the government requires parliament’s consent for security policy. The article investigates legislative logrolling in the context of weak executives, specifically looking at minority coalitions and majority coalitions with ideological and policy divergences. Logrolling is critical for these types of governments, as their structural and situational weaknesses force them to cooperate with opposition parties to maintain parliamentary support. Using the Danish and Dutch decisions to participate in the 2003 Iraq War, and Israel’s 2005 decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, this article elucidates the ways in which legislative logrolling between the governing and opposition parties facilitates security policy-making in parliament.

Keywords

coalitions Gaza Iraq war logrolling party politics

Introduction

Parliamentarism provides exciting institutional settings in which to study executive-legislative relations. The executive is born from within parliament’s ranks and co-exists with the opposition in parliament (Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010; Sartori, 1997). Incumbents utilise their parliamentary base to garner formal and informal backing for their policy proposals, while the opposition parties monitor the government’s behaviour. Parliament simultaneously holds the government to account and serves as the government’s primary support mechanism for policy-making, legitimation and implementation.

Parliaments strongly influence government performance in domestic politics (Olsen and Mezey, 1991). When it comes to foreign and security policy, however, the literature argues that the executive branch dominates policy-making, rendering the legislature’s influence weak and ineffective (Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010). Much of this literature focuses on the government’s role in policy-making and its behaviour abroad, overlooking parliament’s role on security matters pertaining to military involvement, including participation in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations (Brummer, 2013; Ireland and Gartner, 2001; Prins and Sprecher, 1999). While recent work on ‘war powers’ brings parliaments closer to the study of security policy (Mello, 2012, 2014; Strong, 2015), studies continue to treat parliament as an institution in and of itself, disregarding the ways in which the interests and preferences of the political parties in parliament shape the policy-making process.

In this contribution, I conceptualise parliament as a ‘party-political institution’ (Raunio and Wagner, 2017) and emphasise the agency of the political party as a key explanation. Focusing on party-actors in parliament should elucidate the ways in which executive-legislative relationships take place in security policy-making. I suggest that the governing and opposition parties in parliament engage in strategic interaction through logrolling, commonly defined as ‘quid pro quo agreements to exchange support for various items’ (Gerring and Thacker, 2008: 82), but also including policy cooperation in exchange for office payoffs (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo, 2004; Luebbert, 1986). Although logrolling is frequently observed in public policy-making, I argue that it is a feature of parliamentary politics that travels to foreign and security policy-making.

My contribution thus addresses a guiding question of this special issue (Mello and Peters, 2018): what are the opportunity structures for parliamentary involvement in security policy? When the government is subjected to parliament’s formal or informal ex ante veto power on proposals pertaining to military action (Wagner et al., 2017), I show that logrolling ‘allow[s] for the solution of coordination problems’ (Gerring and Thacker, 2008: 82) among parties, facilitating policy-making and implementation.

To illustrate how this strategic interaction takes place, I start by asking, how do government proposals for military action receive support in parliament? Contrary to the ‘parliamentary peace’ thesis (Dieterich et al., 2015), I contend that when parliament is equipped with voting powers on military action, incumbent parties that govern weak executives engage in logrolling with the opposition to avoid a veto. Logrolling extends a lifeline to the incumbent parties and their policy proposals, particularly when they suffer from structural and situational weaknesses due to the size and mathematical setup of their governments and the degree of ideological/policy divergences that exist among them. A ‘strong’ parliament can and does support decisions for military action when the incumbent pulls the opposition towards its own position by offering side payments in the form of office or policy perks.

I shed light on the logrolling mechanism in the context of coalition governments because multi-party governance increases the possibility of observing structural or situational weaknesses at any point during the government’s lifecycle, necessitating cooperation with the opposition. Assuming that party discipline exists, single-party majority governments enjoy policy safety in parliament due to their unified seat share and seldom face defeat in a parliamentary vote (for an exception, see Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010). Some multi-party arrangements such as grand coalitions also enjoy a stable policy-making environment in parliament given the ‘balance of power’ between the constituent parties (Saalfeld, 2010: 84). Many other coalitions, however, fight battles both inside and outside the executive branch due to a variety of constraints ranging from their seat share in parliament to the ideological differences among the cabinet parties (Beasley and Kaarbo, 2014; Lijphart, 1999; Oktay, 2014). As a result, coalition governance often proliferates the range of possible interactions between the executive and legislative branches, facilitating logrolling. This proliferation not only places the parliamentary opposition in an advantageous position to exploit the weak spots of the incumbents but also incentivises coalition actors to collaborate with the opposition to decrease the risk of policy rejection in parliament.

Using case studies from Denmark, the Netherlands and Israel, I demonstrate that incumbent parties can garner parliamentary approval for military action by utilising the opposition’s office and policy preferences to offer them side payments in return for its vote. The incumbent parties in Denmark and the Netherlands offered such perks to their counterparts in parliament to secure their support in the run up to the much contested 2003 war in Iraq. Likewise, in Israel, as the Likud-led majority coalition was disintegrating in reaction to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s proposal to unilaterally disengage from Gaza in 2004, Sharon had to provide the opposition parties with both policy and office payoffs to secure majority support in parliament. In all three cases, the inherent weaknesses of their governments compelled the incumbent parties to seek outside support from parliament in exchange for policy and office payoffs.

The case analyses show that logrolling is a powerful mechanism for incumbent parties facing weak executives to attract those in the parliamentary opposition to generate support for contested proposals for military action. This mechanism is observed across and outside Europe, across different coalitional configurations, and at different stages of the government’s lifecycle. Furthermore, logrolling takes place even when the proposed military action has direct implications for national security as the Gaza disengagement case shows. Logrolling between the government and the opposition not only facilitates military action, but brings both groups of parliamentary actors into the policy-making process in an issue area where the executive authority is expected to remain supreme.

In what follows, I first provide an overview of the literature on parliamentary politics and security policy, and discuss the ways in which some coalition arrangements increase the possibility of logrolling with the opposition. Next, I discuss my case selection strategies and provide brief overviews of the political contexts that led Denmark, the Netherlands and Israel to consider military action, followed by the analysis. I conclude with a discussion of the results, their implications for other types of weak executives beyond these cases, and offer avenues for future research.

Parliamentary politics and coalitions in security policy-making

Legislatures are indispensable to democratic governance. They participate in domestic policy-making and check executive power by maintaining accountability and oversight (Raunio and Wagner, 2017). They help the opposition monitor the government and stay informed, while also allowing the partners in multi-party governments to ‘keep tabs on each other’ (Thies, 2001: 592; see also Martin and Vanberg, 2011: 41).

Existing research argues, however, that legislatures are largely irrelevant when it comes to foreign and security policy. Raunio and Wagner (2017: 3) state that issues pertaining to international conflict are ‘non-legislative items’ and fall under the umbrella of the executive. Moreover, since foreign and security issues often ‘evoke notions of national unity’, parliaments rarely prefer complicating the policy-making process by dissent (Raunio and Wagner, 2017: 3).

Recent works state that these claims have lost their traction since the Cold War. As military operations have become less about national security and more about deploying material capabilities beyond bordering regions, governments are expected to present better articulated reasons to constituencies; thus, they bring the debate to parliament (Mello and Peters, 2018). Furthermore, as the public gets more informed and internationally more connected (Norris, 2011; see also Raunio and Wagner, 2017), they demand their representatives to advocate clear preferences in security policy (Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010; Mello, 2012; Raunio and Wagner, 2017). Strong (2015) demonstrates that majoritarian systems like the United Kingdom have begun to require parliamentary consensus for international military deployments since the Iraq War, precisely alluding to these electoral dynamics and the changing security context.

Others contend that as legislatures have become more involved in security policy since the Cold War, they have contributed to less aggressive policies abroad. Known as ‘parliamentary peace’, this thesis suggests that greater legislative involvement in the security domain across European democracies has decreased the likelihood of international military engagement (Dieterich et al., 2015; Wagner, 2018 in this issue). This argument echoes Reiter and Tillman (2002), who conclude that dispute initiation is less likely when parliament has greater powers over foreign and security policy, especially over treaty ratification. Kesgin and Kaarbo (2010: 23) highlight that since ‘parliaments are more responsive to war-averse citizens’, they should be less supportive of government initiatives to participate in international military operations.

The literature conceptualises parliament as an institution with a unified, ‘specific role’ (Dieterich et al., 2010: 7) vis-à-vis the government. It seems as if the legislature can be studied as a homogeneous institution with a goal of checking the government’s security policy and discouraging it from international militarised behaviour. To accomplish this goal, the legislature may rely on its informal and formal powers. These range from ‘questioning’ the government to voting on all decisions pertaining to military activity, including the initial decision to deploy troops to subsequent decisions to extend the mission or increase resource allocation during the operation (Dieterich et al., 2010). The more expansive these powers are, the more influential parliament is in the security domain, and most importantly, the more constrained the government is in security policy-making. Yet, across a range of parliamentary systems, we continue to see legislatures, with different degrees of gatekeeping powers, sanctioning government proposals for military action.

The existing approach to theorising the role of parliaments in security policy fails to address these anomalies for two reasons. First, it focuses on the legislature without taking a closer look at its key components—political parties—and ignores how the legislature also serves as a platform for government parties to interact with those in opposition. Without accounting for the distribution of ideological and policy-specific positions of the executive and the legislative players, the argument that parliaments constrain the incumbents in the security domain remains weak.

Existing work highlights this viewpoint. Clare (2014) argues that the distribution of ideological positions across the government and the parliamentary opposition matters for the former’s ability to reap territorial concessions from the adversary during international negotiations. Echoing Putnam’s (1988) ‘two-level game’ framework, Clare (2014) illustrates that a government can utilise the parliamentary opposition’s ideological position both as a scare factor and as a domestic constraint to convince the adversary to yield. Elman (2000) demonstrates that hawkish executives are more likely to lead their countries to war when they co-exist with dovish legislatures in majoritarian systems. She shows the limits of ‘parliamentary peace’ by situating the effects of partisan-ideological differences between the government and parliament in the broader context of their political systems.

Second, to the extent that the ideological and policy-specific positions of the governing parties align with their opposition counterparts, much of the preceding debate concerning parliament’s ability to influence the government’s security policy and check its involvement in military activity may turn out to be inconsequential. Mello (2012) shows that parliamentary war powers are muted when the government and the legislature fall on the same side of the left-right political spectrum. Furthermore, issues with national security repercussions impose precisely this kind of deterrent effect on parliamentary debate and preclude dissent (Wagner et al., 2017).

For issues that do not provoke national security concerns, however, one must still consider whether and to what degree opposition parties prioritise security policy as part of their electoral platforms. As Spruyt (2014) argues, single-issue parties will choose to prioritise their issues even if it means conceding to the government on key security matters such as military deployment. Lagassé and Saideman (2017) conclude that vote-seeking behaviour is a primary motivation for opposition parties to scrutinise publicly the government’s security policy. Political parties will care about ‘war-averse citizens’ as long as the probability of getting re-elected depends on them.

In sum, party preferences matter and the importance of accounting for them constitutes the crux of this contribution: it is possible that the government identifies the key interests of the opposition parties and exploits those interests to secure policy approval during the parliamentary vote. Likewise, opposition parties can exploit the government’s structural and situational¹ weaknesses—its size vulnerabilities in parliament and the ideological/policy divergences among its constituent parties - by engaging in policy cooperation in exchange for advancing their own interests in parliament. If the government and the parliamentary opposition can enter into such logrolling, the outcome may easily defy the expectations regarding the parliamentary constraints on security policy, especially when parliament enjoys a formal or informal veto power.

Logrolling is observed frequently in legislatures in the context of public policy. An example from the US Congress would be ‘an appropriations bill for rivers-and-harbors legislation’—an agreement between legislators that hinges on exchanging support for each other’s preferred proposals (Anderson, 2010: 146). Aksoy (2012: 538) explains a Nebraskan senator’s position shift on the health care bill in 2009 ‘in exchange for a compromise on abortion’ as well as ‘an assurance of massive federal health care aid for his home state’.

In the broadest sense, logrolling is defined as ‘voting alliances’ in parliament (Lanfranchi and Luethi, 1999: 118). Logrolling may take place among individual members of the legislature, where the legislator’s re-election depends on delivering ‘pork’ to her district (Evans, 1994). It can also take place along party lines ‘if, through cooperation’, parties ‘can secure higher payoffs for themselves than would otherwise be possible’ (Kreppel and Hix, 2003: 80). Logrolling is thus often observed in coalition politics. Unable to govern alone, cabinet parties support each other’s policy priorities today to receive support for their own proposals in the future (Browne and Frendreis, 1980; Hagan, 2001; Roubini and Sachs, 1989). In doing so, parties keep their government intact.

Logrolling also occurs in the grey zones of executive-legislative relations, such as when parties work together to form a government. Luebbert (1986: 63) calls this type of logrolling ‘explicit compromise’, where opposition parties consent to policies that fall outside of their preferences ‘as a quid pro quo for participation in a coalition’ (see also Saalfeld, 2010: 89). Huber and Martinez-Gallardo argue that ‘cabinet positions could function as part of a logrolling mechanism’, where the incumbents use cabinet positions as payoffs to ‘coalition members or outside parties’ in exchange for parliamentary support (Huber and Martinez-Gallardo, 2004: 41–42; emphasis added). In sum, although logrolling primarily involves exchanging policy support across parliamentary actors, maximalist definitions capture office payoffs in return for policy cooperation in the legislature.

International relations (IR) literature shows that logrolling is not unique to public policy-making but is also observed in foreign and security policy. Mattes et al. (2015: 281) point to Fordham (1998), who ‘shows that the economic makeup of districts helps to explain foreign policy voting in the U.S. Senate’, illustrating the legislators’ ability to logroll across issue domains. Snyder (1991) demonstrates how logrolling among coalition parties leads to overexpansion, resulting in counterproductive international adventures. Kaarbo (1996), also studying logrolling in coalitions, illustrates how junior coalition parties in Israel offer future side payments to their cabinet partners to realise their current policy preferences regarding the peace process (Kaarbo, 1996). Recently, Beasley and Kaarbo (2014) introduce logrolling among coalition parties to explain why some parliamentary democracies engage in extreme behaviour abroad. Although these studies highlight how logrolling in parliamentary systems influences foreign and security policy, their focus remains inside the government. Legislative logrolls remain understudied.

Parliamentary systems provide excellent settings to study legislative logrolls because these systems often generate multi-party executives. Single-party majority governments are rare outcomes in parliamentarism (Gallagher et al., 2006; Oktay, 2017). Between 1945 and 2015, only about 12% of all governments in western Europe had enjoyed single-party majorities (Bassi, 2017). These governments usually enjoy structural strength: once in power, their parliamentary size secures stable support in parliament. They seldom need parliamentary logrolls, especially if they are also situationally strong, that is if the governing party is ideologically cohesive, maintains discipline and needs simple majority to pass a parliamentary bill (Elman, 2000; Kesgin and Kaarbo, 2010). In coalitions, however, the nature of multi-party governance makes parliamentary coordination more difficult. It aggravates ‘the joint problems of cohesiveness and discipline’ (Bowler et al., 1999: iiv).

Coalitions thus proliferate the conditions where structural and situational weaknesses arise, increasing the possibility of legislative logrolls. Minority coalitions, for instance, are structurally weak regardless of how ideologically cohesive and disciplined the governing parties might be: their size forces them to cooperate with the opposition to secure votes in the legislature. To do so, they must offer the opposition what it wants. Majority coalitions are structurally stronger, although the mathematical organisation of the governing parties may diminish the size advantage in parliament. For instance, majority coalitions often give disproportionate power to junior partners when organised minimally. Since the seat contribution of the junior partner is essential to keep the government’s majority status in parliament, this partner can threaten to leave the government unless its own policy position is adopted (Clare, 2010; Kaarbo, 1996), increasing the need for legislative logrolling.

Certainly, we should observe this scenario under situationally weak conditions, that is when the governing parties suffer from ideological or policy divergences. Surplus governments are cushioned with extra parties precisely to avoid junior party blackmail, but even these structurally strong coalitions become situationally weak when the partners diverge on ideology or policy preferences. Although surplus coalitions engage in more committed international behaviour than single-party majority governments, their commitment levels decrease at lower levels of ideological cohesion (Oktay, 2014), alluding to the interaction between structural and situational contexts. Finally, incumbent parties in all coalitions know that they ‘govern jointly’, but ‘compete for votes separately’ (Martin and Vanberg, 2011: 11). To the extent that future electoral concerns dominate decision-making, parties can leave the government when a policy proposal undermines their platforms. Single-party majority governments, too, may seek legislative logrolls under extreme circumstances. Some coalitions like the 2005 German grand coalition (Saalfeld, 2010) are stronger than others and may not even need legislative logrolls. Still, the nature of coalition governance simply generates more scenarios where the executive suffers from weaknesses due to these structural and situational dynamics, increasing the possibility of legislative logrolls.

As I demonstrate below, logrolling explains how coalitions that are characterised by structural or situational weaknesses succeed in pulling their parliaments into overseas military operations. Incumbent parties garner the opposition’s support for security policy proposals requiring parliamentary vote by distributing policy and office payoffs. In effect, coalitions that are at the brink of collapse can pull the opposition parties in to change even longstanding policies with national security repercussions. Before turning to the analysis, a discussion of my case selection strategy and brief case overviews is in order.

Case selection and overview

To illustrate how parliamentary logrolling takes place in security policy-making, I utilise three case studies from Denmark, the Netherlands and Israel. Each of these cases exemplifies a weak coalitional configuration at distinct points in the government lifecycle, as well as diverse policies with and without direct national security implications. In all three countries, the governments counted on parliament’s support to engage in Iraq, and in Gaza.

First, I analyse Denmark’s decision to sign the ‘Letter of Eight’ in the run up to the 2003 Iraq War that led the country to join the war coalition. This case represents a setting where a structurally weak coalition seeks the support of a strong parliament for an overseas military operation—a ‘war of choice’. Denmark has been ruled predominantly by minority coalitions (Damgaard, 2000), where the government enjoys 50% or less of the Folketing seats. Danish coalition parties exhibit high levels of party cohesion (Damgaard, 2000: 232–235). When the coalition partners agree on a policy, they expect their party groups to fully support them in parliament.

Denmark’s minority coalitions operate alongside a parliament with expansive war powers. Dieterich et al. (2010: 39) categorise the Danish parliament’s war powers as ‘strong’, where it ‘approve[s], by a prior resolution, any use of force against a foreign state’, and ‘has to formally authorise in advance any deployment of Danish military forces abroad by means of a parliamentary resolution’ that requires a simple majority (Dieterich et al., 2010: 40). Jakobsen (2012: 3) argues that ‘the government is constitutionally obliged to seek consent from the Parliament when it considers participating in operations involving the use of force beyond self-defense’, and that ‘all major troop contributions regardless of mission type are submitted to a vote in parliament’ since 1990. In other words, it was technically impossible for the Danish government to secure parliamentary authorisation to participate in the Iraq War coalition. Yet it did, which is why Mello (2012) and Dieterich et al. (2010) call it a puzzling case.

Second, I analyse the Dutch decision to provide political and material support to the 2003 Iraq War. Unlike Denmark, minimum-winning coalitions dominate the Dutch political system (Pennings and Keman, 2008), where the government loses its parliamentary majority upon any junior partner’s departure (Lijphart, 1999). Like Denmark, the Dutch parliament has ‘strong’ war powers: ‘the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer) must approve a state of war declaration and authorise the use of military force’ (Dieterich et al., 2010: 44). When it comes to other international military missions, the Dutch government does not ‘constitutionally require consent of the parliament’ (Everts, 2010: 4). However, the government is required to inform parliament, ‘and in practice this has evolved into a situation where parliament has a de facto veto on any dispatch of the armed forces abroad’ (Everts, 2010: 4, emphasis in original; see also Mello, 2012).

Dutch political parties enjoy high levels of intra-party cohesion (Andeweg, 2008; Andeweg and Irwin, 2005), owing to the transformation of the domestic political system away from consensus-politics to competition in the late 1960s (Kaarbo, 2012). This competition has also transformed Dutch foreign and security policy-making. They had been considered elite affairs previously (Baehr, 1980; see also Verbeek and Van der Vleuten, 2008: 361) but got ‘more polarized and domesticated’ by the 1970s onwards (Kaarbo, 2012: 73).

Most importantly, the debate over Dutch participation in the war did not take place during the government’s normal lifecycle, but in the uncertain aftermath of parliamentary elections. The senior party in the outgoing coalition, the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDA), was re-elected in January 2003 but could not form a government until May 2003. During those five months, the CDA engaged in coalition talks with various parties in the new legislature. How to handle the Iraq war, and in what capacity the Dutch would support it, were debated during these negotiations—only months before the June 2003 parliamentary vote—where one should expect logrolling for office payoffs to be the most visible.

Finally, I analyse the 2005 Israeli decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and dismantle the Jewish settlements to illustrate that legislative logrolling over security policy is not unique to Europe. Although Israeli governments do not need prior parliamentary approval for military missions (Peters and Wagner, 2011), the Knesset’s support was politically necessary to execute the Gaza plan which would dismantle a cornerstone of Israeli national security policy, thus placing the legislature at the heart of the decision-making process.

Israel has always been ruled by large majority coalitions due to the highly fragmented legislatures produced by the country’s electoral system (Freilich, 2006). As these governments secure ‘automatic parliamentary majority’, Freilich argues that they ‘deny the Knesset a significant oversight role’ (Freilich, 2006: 640–641). However, since the large majority coalitions also make ideological disagreements between the partners more likely, it would be misleading to assume that one cabinet party’s proposal over security policy would receive guaranteed support from the coalition.

The Gaza case illustrates this phenomenon. The proposal to disengage was first raised by Prime Minister and Likud leader Ariel Sharon in 2003. It quickly generated dissent among the parties in Sharon’s coalition, which subsequently left the government (Spruyt, 2014). The government was facing collapse when the Labour and the United Torah Judaism (UTJ) parties joined forces with Likud to avoid an early election. They helped the Gaza proposal clear the parliamentary hurdle in 2005 in exchange for policy and office payoffs.

Table 1 provides a summary of the cases. As I demonstrate in the following sections, logrolling enabled weak executives in these countries to overcome parliamentary resistance against security policy. Quantitative studies suggest that minority coalitions, minimum-winning coalitions and ideologically contentious coalitions should have difficulty making assertive commitments (Oktay, 2014) such as decisions to participate in joint military operations, or to reverse decades-old national security policy. Demonstrating how governing parties can harness the power of the parliamentary opposition by offering them side payments helps us address the cases that challenge the existing findings.

Table 1.

Summary outline of the cases.

	The Executive	The Legislature	Government Lifecycle	National Security Implication	Type of Logrolling	Legislative Outcome
Denmark (Iraq War)	Weak	De jure veto power	During elected term	Low	Policy payoffs	Pass
Netherlands (Iraq War)	Weak	De facto veto power	At formation	Low	Office payoffs	Pass
Israel (Gaza Plan)	Weak	De facto veto power	Near termination	High	Policy and office payoffs	Pass

Coalition politics in Denmark and the vote for Iraq

Characterised as Danish ‘defeatism’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’ (Rasmussen, 2005), Denmark’s non-militarist foreign policy took sharp turns after the Cold War. To recalibrate the country’s role in international affairs after the demise of the Soviet threat, Denmark first made a modest contribution to the 1991 Gulf War by sending a naval ship (Olesen, 2012). The second major policy pivot towards ‘super-Atlanticism’ (Mouritzen, 2007) took place in March 2003. The government proposed a parliamentary resolution to contribute to the Iraq War by signing the ‘Letter of Eight’ as well as sending military personnel and equipment (Moller, 2003).

The government, led by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was a minority coalition comprising the Conservative and the Liberal parties. It had come to power after the 2002 elections, winning 72 seats in the 179-seat Folketing (Pedersen, 2012). For both parties, the international context that had led to the Iraq War was a matter of Danish national security. Frank Laybourn, the Liberal Party’s foreign and security policy adviser, expressed earlier in 2003 that ‘international terrorism is a threat to our peace and security, and can strike any country and any population group—including Denmark and the Danes’ (Laybourn, 2003). He also stated that Prime Minister Rasmussen had ‘share[d] the US assessment of the new threats’, suggesting that the government’s policy position aligned with the United States (Laybourn, 2003).

Although both parties supported the US-led war coalition in Iraq (Rasmussen, 2005), due to their minority status, they had to cooperate with the parliamentary opposition to pass the war bill. The policy positions of the opposition were diverse. The parties on the left, namely, the Social Democrats and the Social Liberals, were against Denmark’s participation in the war especially without a United Nations mandate (Pedersen, 2012). Although the Social Democrats were more decisive in their dissent than the Social Liberals, both parties found the government’s claims that the turmoil in Iraq was a national security matter that necessitated Danish participation to be unconvincing (Olesen, 2012). The opposition party on the right, the Danish People’s Party (DPP), was more sympathetic to the ‘national security’ angle and preferred Denmark to align with the United States than with Germany or France (Olesen, 2012). With its 22 seats in parliament, the DPP could help the government secure the parliamentary vote on the Iraq bill. Knowing this, the DPP was in a privileged position to logroll with the Conservative-Liberal coalition and reap policy concessions in return.

Not surprisingly, logrolling is what took place. The DPP exploited the minority coalition’s size vulnerability and asked for side payments in exchange for its parliamentary votes for a military mission that it had already been supporting on national security grounds. These side payments focused on immigration and refugee reforms, which constituted the DPP’s electoral platform (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2002: 14). The government agreed to cooperate with the DPP and passed a series of stringent reforms on these items (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2003a) in exchange for the war bill in March 2003. Furthermore, Kaarbo and Cantir (2013: 471) highlight that ‘the Danish People’s Party did indeed trade its votes for later deployment of peacekeepers in Iraq for concessions on asylum policies’ in May 2003, following the initial military confrontation stage.

Coalition negotiations in the Netherlands and the decision for Iraq

The Dutch decision to support the Iraq War involves providing political support, followed by a subsequent military deployment comprising 1100 troops to the Iraqi province of Al Muthanna (Everts, 2010). It also demonstrates the ways in which domestic politics gets intertwined with international security concerns: from August 2002 until the parliamentary vote in June 2003, the deliberations over the country’s involvement in Iraq had extended across one caretaker coalition and two possible incoming coalitions, one of which had collapsed at the negotiation stage (Oktay-Karagul, 2014). All of these coalitions were (and would have been, had the first round of talks not failed) minimum-winning, in which the CDA held the senior partner position. As I demonstrate below, the Dutch government was able to commit militarily in Iraq due to the newly elected parties’ willingness to support the war in exchange for receiving seats in the incoming coalition led by the CDA following the January 2003 elections.

Although the right-wing CDA-VVD-LPF coalition had begun debating the provision of political support for the war as early as August 2002 (Everts, 2010), the government collapsed due to a crisis in LPF and assumed caretaker status in October. When the United States officially asked the Netherlands to join the war coalition in November 2002, the caretaker government ‘announced that the Netherlands would “support the U.S”’, though without specifying any military contributions (Everts, 2010: 8; see also Davids Commission, 2010).

Even before the proposal to participate in the war was brought to the Tweede Kamer, the newly elected parties in parliament were engaging in quid pro quo politics. The incumbent CDA were re-elected with the largest number of seats in the January 2003 general election and, in February, began coalition talks with the runner-up, the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) (Van Holsteyn and Irwin, 2004). The PvdA leader had been strongly opposed to the war and argued that ‘the Netherlands should not give “political support” to the Americans’ despite the CDA’s previously declared position to support the United States (Beunderman, 2003; see also Kaarbo, 2012: 105). However, Everts (2010: 26, emphasis added) reports that the CDA deliberately refrained from protesting the PvdA regarding their disagreements over Iraq since the CDA leader, Jan Peter Balkenende, wanted ‘to keep the door open to the PvdA as a new coalition partner’.

More dramatically, the PvdA conceded to the CDA when the caretaker Balkenende government ‘provided military hardware to support the U.S. in the Gulf region’ (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2003b: 1). Finally, the government ‘deployed a submarine and frigate to the Middle East under U.S. military command’, completely violating the understanding between the CDA and the PvdA at the government negotiation stage (Kaarbo, 2012: 106). Nevertheless, the PvdA decided to continue the negotiations: ‘within a week [of the deployments], Labour seemed to soften its stance when Balkenende and [the PvdA leader] Bos agreed that the Netherlands was part of the U.S.-led coalition’ (Kaarbo, 2012: 106).

Several analyses concur that the PvdA stomached the CDA-led overtures to support the war in Iraq due to its ambition to join the incoming government (Everts, 2010; Van Der Meulen and Soeters, 2005). As the CDA initially ‘kept an open door’ to PvdA to secure a parliamentary majority, PvdA tolerated the CDA’s advances towards the Iraq war coalition. Although the negotiations ultimately collapsed in April 2003 (Kaarbo, 2012), an Economist Intelligence Unit report (2003d) later revealed that PvdA had even agreed to send Dutch marines to Iraq once the fighting was over.

The CDA continued negotiating with other parties in parliament throughout April and May 2003. It approached the progressive-democrat D66 next, which was also against the Netherlands’ participation in Iraq. On 18 March, when parliament held its last debate over the war, the D66 leader stated, ‘this is not our war. We think that the government should give neither political nor military support’ (Everts, 2010: 23). The party changed its position within weeks, when it joined the coalition government alongside the CDA and the VVD. Kaarbo (2012: 106, emphasis added) highlights a D66 member’s statement that although the party ‘had strongly opposed the war’, they ‘agreed to concede the issue in exchange for a role in the government’, echoing Luebbert (1986). The new government was formed on 27 May, the cabinet agreed to provide military support for the war on 6 June, and Dutch troops were deployed in Iraq in August 2003 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2003c; Everts, 2010; The New York Times, 2003).

Coalition politics in Israel and the 2005 Gaza disengagement plan

Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War and had been building settlements on the territories since 1977 (Kimmerling, 2006). The Gaza disengagement plan was revealed by Prime Minister Sharon in 2004, proposing the unilateral withdrawal of the Israeli military and the removal of all Jewish settlements from Gaza. The plan was approved in the Knesset in April 2005 and put into effect in August. All Jewish settlements in Gaza were removed by September 2005 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005c; The Guardian, 2005).

Unlike the case of the Iraq War in Denmark and the Netherlands, the national security implications of the Gaza disengagement plan were imminent and are still debated (The Washington Post, 2015). Sharon argued in 1999 that Israeli presence in Gaza had been designed to maximise territorial security and control:

there wasn’t a single shipping container or generator that had been positioned in the territories without a reason. Every settlement was placed in such a way as to consolidate Israeli control of essential regions like the Jordan Valley and the hills overlooking the coastal plain. (Shavit, 2006: 2)

Sharon changed his position on the issue in a few years, and other accounts suggested that the plan would contribute to Israel’s national security: Gaza not only lacked the infrastructure and natural resources (Shlaim, 2009: 2) but also had a disproportionately Palestinian population. It was a liability for Israel due to terrorism (Inbar, 2009: 274) and Israel would much rather hold on the West Bank than Gaza considering the former’s significance for Judaism (Kidron, 2004; Waxman, 2008).

Sharon’s government was a large coalition that came to power in 2003. It included the centre-right Likud (38 seats), secular-Zionist Shinui (15), the ultranationalist National Unity (7) and the religious-Zionist National Religion Party (NRP—6 seats) (Diskin and Hazan, 2007; Spruyt, 2014). Together, they held 66 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. Although Israel’s coalitions are often oversized, this was a minimum-winning coalition with an ideologically diverse set of right-wing parties.

The debate over the withdrawal’s national security implications quickly found its way into the ruling coalition. In protest, National Unity left the government first in June 2004, followed by the NRP in November. Both parties saw the region covered in the plan ‘as inherently part of Israel proper’ (Spruyt, 2014: 54). Shinui also left the coalition soon after, leaving Likud alone by December 2004 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005c).

By early 2005, the Likud government was facing two major policy challenges. First, Sharon had to secure the parliamentary vote to move forward with the Gaza Plan. Second, he had to pass the 2005 budget to avoid early elections (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005b). Furthermore, 13 Likud members of parliament (MPs) defected due to the Gaza Plan, forcing Sharon to seek opposition support (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005b). In sum, there was an opportunity for Sharon to distribute budget concessions and office payoffs in exchange for securing the Gaza vote in the Knesset.

The opposition parties, Labour and UTJ, utilised this opportunity to logroll with Likud and entered the coalition in January 2005. Some reports suggest that the disengagement plan was ‘the main justification for Labour’s presence in the coalition’ (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005d: 15). Labour leader Amram Mitzna had proposed a more modest withdrawal plan before the 2003 elections, but failed to receive public support (Shamir and Shamir, 2007; The New York Times, 2004). Mitzna told reporters that Labour would join the coalition ‘without portfolios’ but ‘only for voting, for influence’ (Haaretz, 2004). Other Labour members similarly affirmed that their goal was ‘to help Sharon carry out the disengagement plan’ (The Independent, 2004). The actual deal, however, also included trade-offs in the budget plan. Labour’s Shimon Peres had ‘told Sharon that while Labour’s main reason for entering the government is the disengagement plan, it cannot join without some concessions on economic and social issues’ (Haaretz, 2004, emphasis added).

Similarly, the ultra-Orthodox UTJ agreed to support the Gaza Plan in exchange for joining the government as well as policy concessions on the ‘couple registration bill’ and the Tal Law. Both were policy priorities for the UTJ: the ‘registration’ bill would ‘allow couples not willing or unable to marry through the Chief Rabbinate to register as a couple’, while the Tal Law targeted yeshiva students studying the Torah (Haaretz, 2004). Likud agreed to ‘shelve’ both (Haaretz, 2004). With the additional 24 seats from the two parties, the new coalition could secure a simple parliamentary majority to pass both the budget and the Gaza Plan in April 2005 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2005a).

Conclusion

This article contributes to IR scholarship that brings parliaments back into the analysis of security policy (Raunio and Wagner, 2017). It demonstrates that parliament serves as a resource pool for weak coalition governments to utilise when the proposed security policy requires parliamentary consent. It also moves away from the extant research that focuses on ‘parliamentary competencies’ towards highlighting the legislature’s role as a political marketplace. Parliament’s ability and willingness to support military action depends on the ability of the government to address the opposition’s interests in exchange for their votes, as well as on the opposition’s willingness to take advantage of the government’s vulnerabilities to advance its own policy preferences. As the case studies show, opposition parties utilise their parliamentary seat advantage to reap policy and office concessions from the incumbent parties. The incumbents turn the constraints of multi-party governance into occasions for cooperation with the opposition to get support for security policy. The outcome of these interactions suggests that ‘parliamentary peace’ may not be as pervasive as the existing studies claim. Wagner (2018) in this issue tackles this puzzle further.

My contribution complements this special issue’s overarching themes. First, it shows that coalition governance provides an opportunity structure for the parliamentary opposition to utilise its legislative powers to scrutinise and sanction the government’s proposals for military action. Second, it demonstrates how the opposition parties may use their parliamentary prerogatives to advance their own office and/or policy interests. The effect of parliamentary participation in security policy thus spills over to other issue domains, such as immigration in Denmark, or civil rights in Israel. Third, my analysis sheds light on the extent to which security policy is politicised and used as a bargaining tool by both the government and opposition actors to achieve their respective goals.

More broadly, my analysis responds to the coalition foreign policy literature (see Oppermann et al., 2016) by illustrating how logrolling takes place not just between the government partners but also between the government and the opposition. It highlights a mechanism by which ‘weak’ coalitions can withstand ‘strong’ parliaments and engage in assertive policies such as military action. Much has been written on the inability of coalitions to engage in extreme foreign policy behaviour (see Oktay 2017 for a review); parliamentary logrolling proves to be a fruitful mechanism for weak coalitions to secure support and engage in such behaviour.

Two dimensions of my contribution require further work. First, the role of prime ministers in parliamentary logrolling remains to be seen. For instance, some argue that Ariel Sharon secured the Gaza vote in parliament because he was Sharon—he was the only actor in Israeli politics who could have taken a controversial initiative like the Gaza withdrawal (Yerkes, 2004). Kaarbo (2018) in this issue argues that prime-ministerial leadership styles may be instrumental in weakening parliamentary war powers. Future work can investigate whether some leaders are more capable of initiating parliamentary logrolls than others.

Second, my analysis does not account for those instances where logrolling starts within the cabinet ranks but spills over to parliament to defuse intra-cabinet dissent. As Lagassé and Mello (2018) show in this issue, Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder bundled the parliamentary vote for Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) with a vote of confidence to deter the coalition partner (Greens) from voting against OEF. In doing so, Schroeder pressed the Greens hard to logroll in parliament to save both the government and the motion for OEF. Clearly, there are multiple pathways to legislative logrolling. Future studies should highlight these pathways more systematically to answer whether certain political and institutional conditions make some pathways more advantageous for coalitions than others.

Finally, whether these results travel to other types of weak executives is yet to be seen. Single-party minority governments face similar structural weaknesses as minority coalitions and require opposition support to secure votes in parliament, as do single-party majority governments with low party cohesion and discipline. Logrolling could occur in these cases, but would the opposition prefer bringing down the government instead? Future studies should bring these weak executives into comparative frameworks to identify the conditions under which the opposition prefers logrolling over new elections.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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