PARLIAMENT AND DEMOCRACY - Inter-Parliamentary Union

A case-study of oversight:
security policy
An effective parliament (I): The national level I 137
An area of policy where the issue of parliamentary oversight is currently
being much debated is that of security policy. In a Handbook on
Parliamentary Oversight of the Security Sector, published jointly by the IPU
and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (2003),
three particular challenges are identified for oversight of this policy area:
■ Secrecy laws may hinder efforts to enhance transparency in the
security sector……
■ The security sector is a highly complex field, in which parliaments
have to oversee issues such as weapons procurement, arms control
and the readiness/preparedness of military units. Not all parliamentarians
have sufficient knowledge and expertise to deal with these
issues in an effective manner……
■ The emphasis on international security cooperation may affect the
transparency and democratic legitimacy of a country’s security
policy if it leads to parliament being left out of the process. (p.19)
Two currently troublesome aspects of oversight in this sector can be taken
to exemplify the challenges involved. The first is approval for the deployment
of a country’s armed forces abroad. The Handbook notes that ‘from a good
governance perspective, it is proper and advisable that …..parliament should
have the opportunity to participate in the decision of engaging armed forces
abroad’(p.118). We should add ‘from a democratic perspective’ also. In actual
fact, as the Handbook observes, practice is very variable, from those countries
where deploying troops abroad requires prior parliamentary approval, or in
emergency approval after the event, to those where deployment is the
prerogative of the executive, and parliament is only allowed to debate the issue
but not to control the executive’s discretion.
At the former end of the spectrum are countries such as Sweden and
Germany. In the submission received from the German Bundestag for this
study, it is noted that ‘compared to other countries, the German Bundestag
enjoys very extensive rights of participation in these decisions.’ Its right of
prior approval for the deployment of armed forces abroad was affirmed in a
judgement of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1994, and the precise
mechanism for approval, largely based on existing practice, was spelled out
in the Act on Parliamentary Participation of December 2004. The approval
procedure is described as follows: