Publication

This paper presents a survey of parliamentary ‘war powers’ based on a comprehensive and detailed review of the degrees and institutional forms of parliamentary involvement in military security policy-making. This survey of parliamentary war powers covers the legislative, budgetary, control, communication related and dismissal powers of the respective parliaments relating to the use of military force. Referring to this data, we distinguish five classes of democratic nation-states, ranging from those with ‘very strong’ to those with only ‘very weak’ war powers of the respective national parliament.