Abstract
Security has often been considered a special kind of politics that presents a particular challenge for liberal democracy, whether due to securitised states of exception or technocratic risk management. This article examines whether and how parliaments can be sites of politicisation, moving security from exceptional and technocratic politics toward more ‘normal’ democratic politics. Moving beyond the narrow focus on decisions over the use of military force, the examination focuses on the ‘hard case’ of parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies and provides a case study on the German Bundestag. Overall, it finds that a strict divide between security and normal politics is overly simplistic, even when it comes to intelligence. There is evidence for politicisation that reveals patterns of normal politics through an increasingly institutionalised framework as well as public, increasingly controversial debates, including a good deal of partisan politics. However, debates tend to center on institutional and legal issues as well as symbolic skirmishes after specific events of high visibility, while many restrictions are deeply entrenched in parliamentary conventions and attitudes.
Introduction
Security has often been considered a special kind of politics that presents a particular challenge for liberal democracy. A Special Issue on parliaments in this peculiar area not only reflects this established view but also invites reconsideration. One of the Special Issue’s key concerns is whether and how parliaments can become sites of politicisation in the purportedly special security field (Peters and Mello, 2018). This article contributes to this agenda by examining whether and how parliamentary involvement in security affairs has moved beyond its special status in democratic politics and toward more ‘normal’ politics. Large parts of the conceptual literature on security regard security as a form of depoliticisation or anti-politics that closes down the political process; limits the range of legitimate arenas, actors and arguments; and empowers executive and technocratic actors (Aradau, 2004; Huysmans, 2014). These assumptions prevail whether due to existential threat constructions that invoke a sense of exception and enable the adoption of extraordinary measures (Buzan et al., 1998) or bureaucratic routines of risk management by technocratic ‘security professionals’ (Bigo, 2002). Yet, the debate has become more complex and now acknowledges a broader variety of, often quite ‘normal’, security politics (Browning and MacDonald, 2013; Roe, 2012). Recent research comparing parliamentary security politics during different periods of time as well as with parliamentary business in other areas also indicates that parliaments often serve as especially important arenas of rather normal democratic politics (Bright, 2015; Neal, 2012a). Examples in recent years include the 2014 report on torture practices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by the US Senate or the creation of a temporary committee in the European Parliament (EP) to investigate the role of European countries in ‘extraordinary renditions’ that presented its report in 2012. This also chimes in with research suggesting that in the increasingly intrusive security field along the blurred divide between internal and external security, partisan politics and public contestation no longer simply stop at the water’s edge (Hegemann and Kahl, 2016; Raunio, 2018; Wagner et al., 2017) as well as with normative expectations that politicisation is a precondition for democratisation (Zürn, 2014: 57) and public deliberation and control are necessary to ‘civilise’ security (Loader and Walker, 2007).
A move toward normal politics would be a key indicator for a role of parliaments as sites of politicisation. Politicisation is not restricted to expanding political conflict, including broad-scale societal polarisation and mobilisation outside traditional places of politics as usual, as it is often conceptualised in current debates on politicisation in International Relations and European Integration (De Wilde, 2011: 566–567; Grande and Hutter, 2016: 7). For the role of parliaments in security policy, it rather seems appropriate to step back and see whether especially sensitive issues are taken out of the sphere of existential exception and technocratic risk management and brought into the public political arena. Hence, politicisation, in a first step, implies ‘making collectively binding decisions a matter or an object of public discussion’ (Zürn, 2014: 27). In the words of Colin Hay (2007: 79), it means moving an issue from the non-political ‘realm of necessity’ to the political ‘realm of contingency and deliberation’. This move also seems to be what Buzan et al. (1998: 29) had in mind when they juxtaposed securitisation to politicisation, which for them denoted making an issue ‘a matter of choice’ that can be exposed to ‘the normal haggling of politics’.
Empirically, this article deals with intelligence oversight as a distinct parliamentary practice. There is a broad literature on executive–legislative relations when it comes to the use of force and the control of the military (for an overview, see Mello and Peters, 2018). However, the blurring of the traditional internal–external divide means that more and more issues can impinge upon citizens’ rights and daily lives, which raises questions of parliamentary control along the full security spectrum. Intelligence is an especially interesting and challenging area. It is generally seen as an extremely sensitive issue close to the core of sovereignty and essential for national security, which requires confidentiality and is unsuitable to public debate and open control. Peter Gill (2007: 15) calls intelligence oversight ‘perhaps the most demanding of all parliamentary challenges’. Hence, it can be seen as a ‘hard case’ for normal politics. At the same time, the growing powers granted to intelligence agencies in the aftermath of 9/11 and the exposure of intelligence and surveillance scandals led to a new academic and political interest in the opportunities and limits of intelligence oversight (Bochel et al., 2014; Caparini, 2007; Gill and Phythian, 2006). This article does not aim to evaluate the appropriateness of existing mechanisms of parliamentary oversight. Rather, it is interested in the politics of intelligence oversight as a central context of parliamentary involvement in security affairs.
More specifically, this article features a case study on parliamentary intelligence oversight in the German Bundestag’s Parliamentary Control Panel (PCP). Alongside the US Congress with its unique powers and greater legislative–executive distance in a presidential system, Germany is often mentioned for its established tradition of parliamentary intelligence oversight (Bochel et al., 2014: 7). The country established official parliamentary oversight early on in 1956 due to historic experience under Nazi rule and has accumulated considerable experience in this field. Moreover, it recently went through a series of reforms that offer a snapshot on possible trajectories of intelligence oversight in liberal democracies. In this sense, it is emblematic for a wave of debates in many parliamentary systems since ‘9/11’ that put the public spotlight on intelligence agencies. For example, the United Kingdom reformed the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) through the Justice and Security Act of 2013, and Canada currently is considering the creation of a permanent parliamentary body overseeing intelligence agencies. At the same time, Germany looks back at a much longer tradition than these countries. The PCP’s focus on structural oversight and its formal separation from incident-related reviews, which are considerably more susceptible to partisan politics and public attention, further constrains opportunities for comparison with countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, where the Senate Intelligence Committee and the ISC can perform elements of both functions. While the case study allows an exploratory look at whether and how intelligence oversight can become subject to normal politics, specific findings regarding the mechanisms and conditions of politicisation, therefore, require contextualisation and further empirical research.
The remainder of the article is structured as follows. The first part briefly conceptualises normal politics. The second section reviews the political challenges of parliamentary intelligence oversight with a view to the possible emergence of normal politics. Finally, the article offers an empirical case study on intelligence oversight in the German Bundestag’s PCP.
‘Normal’ security politics? Parliaments and the politicisation of security
This article focuses on the question whether parliaments can be sites of politicisation, moving security from the exceptional and technocratic toward ‘normal’ forms of politics. While we cannot recount the full debate here, we need to clarify how we actually know normal politics when we see it. The idea of normal politics was only loosely conceptualised in the original formulation by the Copenhagen School of securitisation (see, for example, Buzan et al., 1998: 29), but it basically connotes ‘the slow process of decision-making and contestation, where decisions follow strict procedural rules, i.e. democratic politics’ (Aradau, 2004: 392). While this connotation might not be the emancipatory politics envisioned by more critical theorists and during many times amount to institution-centered politics as usual, it opens up the political process and provides opportunities for a broader range of actors, arenas and arguments. This shift is especially important for parliaments because it allows for the establishment of ‘democratic politics of transparency and public scrutiny’ (Aradau, 2004: 393) and means that ‘[d]ecisionmaking is open in the sense that legislatures and other bodies are able to scrutinise the executive’ (Roe, 2012: 251).
In order to study a possible shift toward normal politics, we still need to transfer this somewhat vague concept into more observable indicators. For this purpose, the study draws on three dimensions developed by Born and Hänggi (2004): authority, ability and attitude. For the empirical analysis below, we will condense these established factors into two dimensions and search for normal politics along them. First, authority and ability refer to the formal powers of parliaments, usually enshrined in constitutional and legal documents, as well as the capacities at the disposal of parliaments, such as the staff and expertise. The politicisation of security in this sense is linked to the ‘institutionalisation of rule and the stabilisation of authority’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 143). Beyond formal powers and capacities, it is also crucial to see whether intelligence is not located exclusively in the technocratic and executive realm or brought into the ‘realm of public choice’ where it can be subjected to public scrutiny with the possibility of change (Zürn, 2016: 167). In the area of intelligence oversight, this inquiry is less related to formal votes accompanied by plenary debates, but rather to the ability to reveal information and advance competing political opinions in public as formal intelligence oversight usually unfolds almost completely behind closed doors. From a politicisation perspective, the empirical analysis of authorities and abilities, hence, needs to not only look at legal mandates, available staff and expertise, access to information and the reporting duties of intelligence agencies. It also must look at the ability of oversight bodies to inform the public, hold public hearings and issue political assessments or evaluations.
Second, the attitude existing among parliamentarians denotes the actual ‘political will to hold the government accountable’ (Born and Hänggi, 2004: 15). The dimension of attitude is crucial for the idea of politicisation, which implies that parliamentarians are willing to challenge the ‘permissive consensus’ traditionally ascribed to security issues. There is a basic expectation that politicisation goes along with a readiness of parliamentarians to face and challenge governmental positions rather than simply rubber-stamping governmental decisions (Zürn, 2014: 59). Open parliamentary procedures create the ‘possibility of contestation’ beyond crisis-driven exception and technocratic authority (Aradau, 2004: 393). Its realisation, however, depends on an attitude that is willing to exercise scrutiny even if it entails political and partisan conflicts. A basic indicator for the attitude of parliamentarians is the intensity with which they make use of their authority and ability, for example, through the depth and frequency of meetings and reports. In a more fundamental sense, it will be crucial to see whether parliamentary oversight bodies or individual members are willing to publicly engage in controversial discussions and even challenge the government on intelligence issues. This contestation should also entail common dynamics of partisan politics, which has traditionally been seen as largely absent from intelligence oversight but which has been identified as a key and growing component of many areas of security politics, including post–Cold War ‘wars of choice’ (Howell and Pevehouse, 2007; Wagner et al., 2017).
Parliamentary intelligence oversight and the challenge of normal politics
Parliamentary intelligence oversight constitutes a particularly hard case for normal politics and politicisation. In addition to internal guidance and functional supervision as well as external control from courts or independent oversight bodies, there are two main mechanisms of parliamentary control: review and oversight (Caparini, 2007: 8; Gill, 2007: 15). The former denotes the ex post investigation of intelligence activities, often following the revelation of specific controversial operations and conducted by ad hoc bodies. The latter refers to the continuous, structural control of intelligence agencies by a permanent parliamentary body. Reviews in response to specific ‘scandals’ tend to draw a lot of public attention and serve the explicit goal of disclosing problematic practices. Parliaments—or, especially in parliamentary systems, those parties in opposition to the government—frequently use them as a means to compensate not only for the general difficulties of parliamentary oversight but also for symbolic politics and political staging. In contrast, structural daily oversight usually takes place in secret and with strong confidentiality provisions. It tends to be ‘painstaking and unglamorous work for politicians, necessarily conducted almost entirely behind the scenes’ (Leigh, 2005: 8).
This article focuses on structural oversight, which is central to not only ensure scrutiny beyond short-term scandals but also poses a special challenge for democratic politics. Governments and intelligence agencies tend to argue that intelligence requires confidentiality, trust and leeway in order to realise its essential national security gains and, therefore, is too sensitive to be subjected to the openness and contestability inherent to democratic politics. Parliaments with limited resources and expertise also face practical restrictions in the oversight of vast agencies with opaque structures. Moreover, parliamentary intelligence oversight tends to be a technical process that seldom makes headline news and therefore entails few electoral incentives for parliamentarians that cannot boast of possible achievements in public or, if they do, might be criticised for threatening ‘national security’. Governments can also try to co-opt parliamentarians into the ‘ring of secrecy’, thereby distributing responsibility and preventing them from speaking out loudly. Gill and Phythian (2012: 170) even draw the conclusion that ‘the idea of “democratic intelligence” is as oxymoronic as military music’.
This view is an expression of a broader ambivalence toward politics. While some degree of parliamentary intelligence oversight is generally accepted as a democratic necessity, a wide-spread negative attitude sees the threat of irresponsible politicization, including the abuse of intelligence information, as visible, for example, during the build-up to the Iraq War. Richard Betts (2009: 74) summarises that ‘everyone knows politicisation is bad’. More importantly, there is also a basic fear that parliamentarians and the wider public will unduly accuse intelligence agencies of sensational misdoings and undermine trust in them. This fear reflects a typical discrepancy between activists and critical academics who underline the inherently political nature of most areas of social life as well as the need for the public deliberation of alternative viewpoints, on the one hand, and many practitioners and policy-oriented experts who equate politicisation with instrumentalisation, symbolism and ineffectiveness, on the other hand (Hay, 2007: 91–93). In the intelligence field, even proponents of enhanced scrutiny remain wary of political conflict and call for ‘a stable, politically bipartisan approach that is good for the state’ (Leigh, 2005: 8). This call underlines the special status of intelligence where ‘most of what is seen as illegitimate politicisation is only the reflection of what is considered normal controversy in other arenas’ (Betts, 2009: 74). Hence, it will be especially important to look for dynamics of public controversy and partisan politics that break with these patterns.
Despite these restrictions, parliamentary intelligence oversight has become an established practice throughout liberal democracies, notwithstanding important differences in kind and degree. While most modern intelligence agencies trace their origins to the aftermath of the Second World War and there were some early control bodies and regulations, meaningful intelligence oversight actually started to take shape only following a wave of scandals and investigations in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Church and Pike Committees in the US Congress, as well as mounting pressure from courts and civil society. The United Kingdom is a pertinent example. Initially, the British government refused to engage in any public debate of its intelligence agencies, which were not given an official statutory framework before the Security Service Act of 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act of 1994. Intelligence, for long periods, was clearly removed from normal politics and considered ‘simply not a subject that could be discussed in front of the children, servants or electorate’ (Gill, 2007: 18). In 1994, the United Kingdom then established the ISC. However, the ISC, which was a statutory committee rather than a full parliamentary committee, remained a ‘constitutional anomaly’ (Bochel et al., 2014: 75). Its members were nominated by the government and largely consisted of seasoned members of parliament broadly supportive of intelligence agencies. Its reports were edited by the government before publication and the government could decline requests for sensitive documents. The ISC’s role, hence, sought ‘to maintain the idea that the intelligence agencies are different from other government departments’ (Gill, 2007: 21). The Justice and Security Act of 2013 finally turned the ISC into a full committee of parliament and removed some, though far from all of its formal restrictions. The ISC carefully started to assume a public role through a range of reports, for example, on drone strikes in Syria, the role of women in UK intelligence agencies and the need to ensure privacy in surveillance practices. 1 However, experts doubt whether this change will undo the familiar problems and change the basic attitude in and toward the ISC (Bochel et al., 2014: 97–101).
Toward ‘normal’ politics? Intelligence oversight in the German Bundestag
So far, this article has developed a basic concept of normal politics and discussed why intelligence oversight might be an especially challenging case in this regard. The next section provides an empirical case study of intelligence oversight in the German Bundestag. Over the decades, parliamentary oversight in Germany has come to rest on a complex system reflecting the basic difference between structural oversight and ex post review, which in other political systems, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, can also be conducted by a single body. In Germany, review usually occurs through specifically created parliamentary committees of inquiry, which interrogate witnesses and examine evidence in public with the overall goal to prepare a final public report. In fact, there is no area for which the Bundestag implemented more such bodies than intelligence (Schmidt-Eenboom, 2010: 39). Bodies of inquiry are generally considered a highly symbolic instrument of partisan politics with high visibility. Prominent recent examples examined the role of German intelligence agencies in the ‘war on terror’ and the Iraq War, the failure to disclose the series of murders by the right-wing group National Socialist Underground (NSU) and the consequences of the revelations by Edward Snowden for the operation of foreign intelligence services in Germany as well as the involvement of German intelligence agencies. The responsibility for formal structural oversight, in turn, is spread over several bodies, which all convene non-publicly and are usually seen as less affected by partisan politics. The G-10 Commission, which is staffed with parliamentarians as well as external members, oversees all infringements upon the rights to privacy and secrecy of communication guaranteed in Article 10 of the German constitution. The Independent Committee (Unabhängiges Gremium) placed at the Federal Court of Justice oversees the surveillance of communication between foreigners in foreign countries. Finally, the Bundestag’s PCP (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium/PCP) controls the general work of all federal intelligence agencies, including especially the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst/BND).
This article focuses on the PCP because it has a long continuous tradition and is staffed only by members of the parliament. Rather than covering the whole history of the PCP in full detail, this case study focuses on the post-9/11 period, which saw different rounds of reform and debate in response to controversial actions and expanded intelligence powers in the ‘war on terror’. It is important to acknowledge that intelligence oversight is notoriously hard to research. The PCP convenes secretly and there are no publicly accessible minutes or agendas. Moreover, members are generally not allowed to speak in public about any classified information. However, there is a range of available information. Apart from secondary literature, this information includes laws and internal regulations, the panel’s public reports, media coverage that sometimes also draws on leaks from within the panel as well as plenary debates that discussed the PCP’s activities. In addition, the author in March 2016 conducted interviews with four current and former members representing three different parties. 2
Authority and ability
The PCP derives its basic mandate from the Law on the Parliamentary Control of Federal Intelligence Activities. It oversees activities of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Military Counterintelligence Service and the BND. Since 2009, Article 45d of the German constitution also guarantees the existence of a parliamentary body for the control of intelligence agencies. This step shows the symbolic status devoted to the democratic control of intelligence agencies in the German system, but it also manifests the special status of security policy compared to other parliamentary activities. Interestingly, all other committees explicitly mentioned in the constitution (foreign affairs, defense and European affairs) also relate to foreign and security policy. The special status of security issues within parliament also becomes apparent in the fact that the PCP is not a common parliamentary committee, an idea that has been discussed at several points. Rather, it is a subsidiary body that is not subject to common committee rules, such as proportional representation of all parties, but also disposes of a broader range of control tasks extending beyond common committees (Singer, 2016: 17–22). The PCP can demand access to confidential files, interview representatives of the agencies and must be granted access to all sites and facilities. The committee consists of nine members of parliament, which are elected by majority vote. Officially and unlike in other committees, members are seen to represent the parliament as a whole rather than their individual parties.
Following a number of scandals and inquiries, the mandate and structure of the PCP underwent reform in 2009 and 2016. A major step toward the acknowledgement of these challenges came with the already mentioned committee of inquiry that investigated the BND’s involvement in several activities related to the ‘war on terror’. One central recommendation of the committee’s final report pertained to the need to ‘improve the ability of the Parliamentary Control Panel to receive information and take action’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2009a: 352). In an unusual step, the PCP itself called for a reform of parliamentary oversight and listed publicly discussed proposals, such as a more precise mandate with possible sanctions for the government if it failed to provide adequate information and an ombudsperson for members of the intelligence agencies that want to reveal misconduct (Deutscher Bundestag, 2007: 18–23). In addition to anchoring parliamentary intelligence oversight in the constitution, the eventual reform bill clarified the government’s reporting duties, allowed members to provide public assessments and dissenting opinions in some cases and enabled members to bring one designated staff member to committee meetings. Critics, however, argued that in practice the government could still withhold information and dismissed the reform as ‘cosmetic corrections and halfhearted improvements’ that symbolically responded to public pressures (Schmidt-Eenboom, 2010: 41).
Following the revelations by Edward Snowden and the failure to reveal the series of murders by the right-wing group NSU, a new debate on the oversight of foreign and domestic intelligence agencies emerged, and it became clear that the 2009 reform had proven insufficient. In its report from December 2013, the PCP noted a ‘consensual agreement to further extend and improve the parliamentary control of intelligence agencies’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2013: 14). In July 2016, the governing coalition presented a new bill, which according to its proponents should ensure that control by the PCP becomes ‘more intensive, coordinated and continuous’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2016b: 1). This bill, which entered into force in 2017, centered on the appointment of a permanent commissioner to assist the panel with the help of an expanded staff and an annual public hearing of the directors of all federal intelligence agencies.
The right to speak in public is especially crucial for normal politics to unfold. However, it quickly runs into conflict with the goal to preserve the secret nature of intelligence. PCP members basically cannot speak publicly about what they are doing. They still can provide public evaluations of intelligence agencies’ work based on the prior approval of a two-thirds majority of members, a right reconfirmed by the 2009 reform. However, the proponents of that reform stressed that effective oversight requires panel members who enjoy the trust of services precisely because they are forced to remain secret: ‘The public continues to be largely excluded from control activities in order that the federal government must not hold back any information from the panel due to confidentiality concerns’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2009b: 2). In 2017, the members representing the majority parties decided to forestall the annual public hearing of intelligence agencies’ directors, a right just recently granted to them, until after the general elections in the fall of the same year due to fears that it might be abused for political campaigning, leading to public criticism (Meister, 2017).
The PCP’s resources have increased but continue to remain a subject of critique. Its secretariat in the Bundestag’s general administration has more staff than other committee secretariats and also performs substantial tasks, such as research or the preparation of panel meetings. However, this level of staffing is necessary only because, unlike in other areas, the staffers of individual members are limited in their ability to assist legislators due to confidentiality restrictions. Since 2009, members of the panel can consult staff of their respective party caucus on some issues. Prior to that, the consultation of staff on intelligence matters was considered to ‘deviate’ from the very idea of parliamentary intelligence control that centered on an intentionally small body to ensure a basic sense of trust (Singer, 2016: 162). Following recent scandals, the PCP itself called for more staff to fulfill its mandate and welcomed the addition of three new positions for its secretariat (Deutscher Bundestag, 2013: 14). The most recent reform in 2016 then created the post of a permanent independent commissioner that can assume some rights and tasks of the panel and thereby lower the workload for members. The PCP also has further instruments at its disposal. It can, for example, appoint a rapporteur on specific issues by a two-thirds majority. The panel has drawn on this increasingly to meet its growing demands. A prominent example is the so-called Schäfer-Report on the surveillance of a prominent journalist, which was published in a condensed, edited version (Deutscher Bundestag, 2006b).
The PCP’s reporting duties have also grown, and the panel uses this power increasingly to spread its own political messages. Its main reporting tool is its biannual general public report, which it presents to the full parliament. In addition, it publishes an annual report on counterterrorism activities covered by the Counterterrorism Act of 2002. The 2009 reform also awarded the PCP the right to include comments in its report that explicitly judge the quality of information provided by the government. However, these reports do not entail the possibility of dissenting votes, an attempt officially to steer clear of partisan considerations and political controversy. This restriction is problematic for opposition members because it ultimately forces them publicly to support opinions they opposed in committee meetings (Singer, 2016: 178). To the contrary, the law explicitly allows for dissenting views when it comes to public assessments of special issues, which, however, requires the support from two-thirds of the committee and needs to comply with confidentiality restrictions.
Attitude
In addition to the authority and ability of the PCP, we need to examine the attitude existing in the body to see whether the practice of parliamentary intelligence oversight is actually moving toward normal politics. One important indicator regards the frequency of committee meetings as an expression of the issues’ prominence on the parliamentary agenda and the resources parliamentarians are willing to invest. According to its own reports, the PCP before 2000 met between 23 and 26 times during its 2-year reporting periods. Since then, the number has remained at roughly the same level, usually wavering between 20 (2008–2009) and 29 meetings (2000–2002). 3 Hence, on average, the PCP meets about once a month. However, it is evident that the number of meetings increased when public debate and scandals put the spotlight on intelligence issues. This was the case with 41 meetings during the period between 2005 and 2007, when the PCP was heavily engaged with the BND’s role in the ‘war on terror’, as well as following the Snowden revelations and the disclosure of the series of murders by the NSU with 31 (2011–2013) and 32 (2013–2015) meetings, respectively.
There are no publicly available accounts on the depth of discussion, but the reports include a list of the issues discussed in the committee. They indicate that the PCP engaged with more substantial policy questions. While the number of issues mentioned in the reports wavered between 13 and 19 with an unusual high of 23 between 2005 and 2007, the PCP clearly moved beyond the mere acknowledgement of specific intelligence activities to broader debates on controversial topics like counterterrorism operations and the evolution of specific conflicts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan as well as concrete intelligence scandals and investigations. 4 The reports, however, do not publicly comment on the substance of the discussions.
The reporting practice is another key indicator. Until the 1990s, the PCP’s biennial reports often focused on institutional issues like personnel changes or summaries of the body’s visits to intelligence facilities. They rarely included critical comments and, even on controversial issues like the visit of the BND director to Chechnya, the members restricted themselves to the abstract statement that it ‘served German interests’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2000: 3). The PCP often simply listed and repeated information provided by the government, for example, on the surveillance measures reviewed by the G-10 Commission that does not have the right to issue public reports itself. At the end of each report, there was a routine statement confirming that intelligence services worked ‘according to their legal mandate’ and the government had ‘comprehensively informed’ the body (see, for example, Deutscher Bundestag, 2000: 5). The PCP, hence, showed an ‘almost automated and passive reporting practice’ (Heumann and Wetzling, 2014: 18). This practice also confirms patterns known from other countries. Referring to the ISC in the United Kingdom, Peter Gill (2007: 32), for example, found that its reports ‘read more like those from management consultants than parliamentary critics’.
The tone of the general reports, however, gradually changed over time. For example, the reports started to use more balanced formulas in their comments on the information provided by the government and intelligence agencies, such as the impression that government informed ‘largely appropriate and promptly’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2007: 3; emphasis added). Especially in the wake of the two most recent rounds of reforms, the PCP used its regular reports to draw attention to the issue of intelligence oversight, though in a rather non-offensive manner. In 2007, for example, it highlighted a general need for reform, referenced distinct proposals made by the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats, albeit without endorsing them, and included a synopsis of suggestions, including far-reaching steps such as the establishment of a permanent rapporteur (Deutscher Bundestag, 2007). In 2016, the PCP took up the insights emerging from the post-Snowden debate. It argued that consultations with oversight bodies in other countries led to the impression that ‘national parliamentary intelligence oversight does not keep pace with the increasing transnational cooperation of services’ and ‘a satisfying solution […] so far has not been found’ (Deutscher Bundestag, 2016a: 14).
Furthermore, the PCP has expanded its reporting rule and started publicly to evaluate specific cases of special interest. In 2006, it issued an assessment of public allegations regarding the role of the BND in the ‘war on terror’. The panel requested a report by the federal government, inspected classified documents and conducted interviews. Its final report—adopted by the majority of the then governing ‘Grand Coalition’—confirmed the government’s account and stated that the public debate on this issue in an ‘extremely sensitive area’ had not enhanced the country’s security (Deutscher Bundestag, 2006a: 3). The dissenting assessments provided by all three members of the opposition, however, show that this move structured the public self-representation of this purportedly special committee more visibly along party lines. Moreover, the PCP thereby partially adopted functions usually ascribed to review bodies and—despite its still rather affirmative attitude—became more evaluative compared to its usual reporting practice. Especially during periods of public scandals and controversy, these two functions, which are often performed by a single body in many other countries, thereby, seem to overlap in Germany. Even more technical oversight, hence, is clearly linked to pertinent political dynamics, as also evident in higher levels of activity and reform attempts. This link confirms the general finding that the politics of intelligence are subject to cyclical patterns in which public attention and political activity focus on short periods of public scandals featuring symbolic actions and declarations (Johnson, 2007).
Following the PCP’s legal reform in 2009, this function was further institutionalised through the ability to provide more topical and focused ‘public assessments’ that explicitly can include dissenting views. Following the revelations by Edward Snowden, the PCP established a task force and appointed special rapporteurs to investigate the BND’s strategic communication intelligence practices. In December 2015, the committee members delivered a public declaration that criticised the BND’s previous practices as well as the government’s information policy. It also recommended a number of changes, including a new legal basis for the BND’s strategic communication intelligence, stepped-up internal oversight within the government and a further strengthening of parliamentary control (Deutscher Bundestag, 2016d: 20–21). In July 2016, it then delivered a broader report that did not include the classified information entailed in its official comprehensive report, but still listed the panel’s key findings and its recommendations that largely confirmed its previous public statement. Again, the report included a diverging assessment by Hans-Christian Ströbele of the Green Party (Deutscher Bundestag, 2016b). This reporting shows that recent scandals and the government’s information practice led to some frustration among parliamentarians and provided them with an opportunity to reach a broader public. It also provided incentives for opposition members to distance themselves from controversial practices. One member concluded that now ‘things proceed a little differently’. 5
In May 2017, the PCP then made use of the newly established position of a permanent commissioner. It tasked the commissioner with investigating the failure to prevent the terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 and possible shortcomings in intelligence agencies’ previous handling of the attacker Anis Amri. The report identified problems of information exchange across federal agencies as well as between federal and state agencies. Again, the report featured dissenting assessments by members from opposition parties (Deutscher Bundestag, 2017). These public statements do not yet reveal the kind of ‘immense politicisation’ (Wetzling, 2016: 51) noted in committees of inquiry, but they indicate that parliamentary intelligence oversight can no longer be seen as strictly removed from public discussion and partisan politics.
With the growing public presence of the PCP and questions of intelligence oversight, the committee also became the subject of a number of plenary debates in the Bundestag. Before 2005, the PCP had never been mentioned in more than 14 plenary protocols during the Bundestag’s 4-year term, but during the last three terms since then it came up in some form during 41, 38 and 46 debates, respectively. 6 In these debates, there was no universal consensus among parties, even if debates often focused on the amount of information provided by the government or steps necessary to increase formal oversight rather than the overall direction of security and counterterrorism policy. Unsurprisingly, public conflict usually runs along government-opposition lines. While open conflict between parliamentary majorities and government is generally rare in parliamentary systems, members of the opposition parties could still use plenary debates to raise the issues of democratic control and criticise controversial intelligence practices, especially as they did not actually have to implement their proposal and bear their potential consequences. The Green Party, for example, issued a separate proposal for the reform of parliamentary control following the Snowden revelations (Deutscher Bundestag, 2016c). Even the then co-governing Social Democrats published a distinct paper on oversight reform (SPD-Bundestagsfraktion, 2015). According to one interviewee, partisan politics indeed plays a strong role in the PCP’s everyday work: ‘who thinks that party membership plays no role in the Parliamentary Control Committee is completely mistaken’. 7 This conclusion broadly falls in line with research which suggests that post–Cold War ‘wars of choice’ are increasingly subject to conflict along the established left-right cleavage in European democracies (Wagner et al., 2017: 24–26). However, the PCP case seems to be more complicated. While conservatives are especially eager to support intelligence agencies in public, members of the Social Democrats also refrain from overtly harsh attacks. The only party that constantly positions itself as openly critically toward intelligence agencies is the Left Party, some parts of which, for controversial reasons, have been under observation from domestic intelligence agencies. Still, government-opposition dynamics might be more important than ideological differences, although this claim clearly warrants more research.
Despite the growing willingness to discuss issues in public and the increasing influence of partisan politics, members of the PCP often have accepted the special character of security and intelligence themselves. In interviews, members of the panel confirmed the view that criticizing agencies in public would be detrimental to their control efforts and impede agencies from sharing sensitive information and speaking openly in hearings. One interviewee put it very bluntly: ‘As long as it does not unduly prey on your conscience you need to shut up’. 8 Members have internalised the assumption of a basic trade-off between effective internal control and public debate, although members of the opposition might be more flexible here. Moreover, most members are generally in favor of stronger scrutiny and accountability, but also buy into the basic underlying security narrative that can demand exceptions from common procedures because it is related to the core of state sovereignty and survival. This buy-in visible in statements, which highlight that security ‘always affects the substance of the state‘ 9 or that ‘9/11 changed the world’. 10 This reasoning suggests that security imperatives are not only enforced upon parliamentarians by dominant executive actors negating the right of parliaments. In many cases, parliamentarians themselves adopt the reasoning that security demands exceptions. This can explain why most statements from the PCP tried to ensure a certain level of parliamentary and constitutional control and stressed the governmental duty to inform the parliament but—despite some more critical comments—remained hesitant fundamentally to challenge the basic security narrative underlying expanding intelligence practices and accepted that there must be some limitation uncommon in other areas of parliamentary life. It is hard to say whether this is due to electoral incentives, a basic deference to a larger raison d’état or an actual conviction among most parliaments. However, a useful explanation might be found in Ariadna Ripoll Servent’s study of the EP in post-Lisbon Justice and Home Affairs. She shows that the EP, which often rejected policies infringing upon civil liberties as long as it only had to be consulted, became much less critical once it had secured the right of co-decision because it wanted to present itself as ‘responsible legislator’ in a sensitive area to which it had just been granted full access (Ripoll Servent, 2013).
Conclusion
Overall, this study shows that intelligence oversight in the German Bundestag takes place in a more institutionalised and stable framework. In particular, recent scandals and inquiries led to waves of reforms that sought to address public pressure through visible and symbolic actions. In this process, intelligence oversight also became the subject of public debate. This led the committee to address problems in a more open manner and provided political incentives for members to position themselves through dissenting opinions and reform proposals. This injected a sense of public deliberation and partisan contestation into an area traditionally shaped by a strong orientation toward confidentiality and consensus. While intelligence never has been free of party politics, government-opposition dynamics known from other areas of political life in parliamentary systems are being expressed in an increasingly open manner.
Opportunities to draw conclusions for other countries based on one case are limited and require further comparative research considering special institutional and historical legacies as well as the distinction between structural oversight and incident-oriented review. However, other cases like the reform of the ISC in the United Kingdom and its recent publication of a range of more critical public reports, which we briefly discussed above, indicate that intelligence oversight has become a much more public and political exercise also beyond Germany and the special case of the US Congress, though to different degrees and in different ways.
On this basis, we can speak of, an albeit limited and rather mundane, politicisation that reveals patterns of normal politics through an increasingly institutionalised framework as well as public, partially controversial debates. Hence, intelligence oversight is not strictly constrained to the sphere of exceptional and technocratic politics. However, it is important to stress that public debate tends to center on institutional and legal issues as well as symbolic skirmishes after specific events while hardly engaging with more fundamental criticism of contemporary security policy. Many restrictions are deeply entrenched in parliamentary conventions and attitudes among parliamentarians who generally favor more oversight but do not want openly to challenge basic security premises in ‘times of insecurity’. Attitudes, hence, can constrain parliaments as much as formal restrictions and governmental securitisation moves. In his analysis of counterterrorism legislation in the British parliament, Andrew Neal (2012b: 274) also found ‘a discourse of consensus to tackle terrorism accompanied by an insistence on parliamentary safeguards’ that eventually normalises previously exceptional practices and lends credence to them through a liberal-democratic framing. Moreover, we should not overestimate the political effects of the described developments. Despite all the recent debates, the Bundestag in 2017 still adopted a new law on the BND that, according to critics, did not do much to constrain the agency (Wetzling, 2017). Hence, securitisation dynamics still seem to do part of their job in the face of growing fears of terrorist attacks. Events like the Snowden revelations may induce a certain ‘politicisation boost’ (Hegemann and Kahl, 2016: 36), but it remains to be seen whether this leads to a long-term dynamic or remains in line with familiar cycles of short-term shocks following intelligence scandals that slowly fade back to inertia (Johnson, 2007).
While this study has important limitations and more in-depth comparative research remains necessary, it has become clear that security cannot be neatly separated from normal democratic politics, even in an area traditionally considered a particularly challenging case. Many of the problematic and depoliticising effects of security highlighted by critical security theorists might still apply in many cases, but there are also much more gradual and subtle processes of politicisation involving a broader range of political arguments, actors and arenas. Politicisation does not necessarily mean open conflict and contestation while security is not limited to exceptional and technocratic dynamics. Politicisation researchers, hence, might want to revisit their argument that security is different and eludes public contestation (Zürn, 2013: 34–35), while scholars of security politics should move beyond the emphasis on exception, technocracy or governmentality and acknowledge a broader variety of security politics, an effort that is already under way (Browning and MacDonald, 2013; Neal, 2012b). Parliaments indeed can be a key site of politicisation in this field. ‘Critical’ as well as ‘traditionalist’ scholars of security should study their role in a more open and differentiated manner, while researchers of parliamentary involvement in security policy should engage more deeply with the politics of ‘security’ and move beyond the preoccupation with military deployment votes.
This study, so far, largely steered clear of the debate which politics is preferable from a normative perspective, and it is unable to endorse concrete reform proposals. However, it suggests that normal politics in a more institutionalised sense of increased resources and reporting as well as more substantial politicisation including controversial open debates both have their merits. Public attention and partisan conflict spurred by recent scandals bolstered the self-confidence of parliamentarians and provided political incentives for public criticism as well as reform that—if only gradually—strengthened parliamentary oversight without any signs of excessive politicisation. While confidentiality and trust remain warranted in the intelligence sector, intelligence oversight, hence, can stand a healthy dose of politics. In the long run, it will be necessary to create mechanisms that allow for continuous formal scrutiny beyond short-term scandals as well as for broader deliberation and contestation that put established assumptions up for debate.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the participants of the author workshop at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt in September 2016, especially Florian Böller, Patrick Mello and Dirk Peters, as well as the two anonymous BJPIR reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.