A Path Dependent Prerogative: Why British Prime Ministers Gave Up Their War Powers
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- War powers in Great Britain have traditionally been the exclusive domain of the executive. Parliament did not hold a substantive vote of approval for war until 2003, when it supported regime change in Iraq. Parliament has since held four votes on military action: Libya (2011), Syria (2013), ISIS (2014, Iraq) and ISIS (2015, Syria). This abrupt shift, referred to as the War Powers Convention, has come without legal change in Parliament’s war powers. This thesis examines why parliamentary votes of approval started in 2003 and have been consistently replicated in an otherwise diverse set of political, strategic, and international legal contexts. I argue that the War Powers Convention emerged from a process of path-dependent institutional development enabled by Britain’s convention-driven constitution. Specifically, a contingent event in the vote over war in Iraq, forced by a significant Labour Party rebellion, was a critical juncture that launched a process of progressive reinforcement of the perceived superior legitimacy of parliamentary war powers. The more MPs and Ministers supported parliamentary war powers in their statements and actions, and especially as subsequent parliamentary votes were held, the more political-constitutional expectations adapted to affirm Parliament’s role. Through this reinforcement, what was a contingent choice to hold a vote in 2003 has become a politically-enforced constitutional convention that has constrained later Prime Ministers to follow earlier precedent, especially during the debates on military action against Syria and ISIS. Beyond war powers, path-dependence appears to be a promising framework to analyze convention-based constitutional change Britain more broadly.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2019 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Dow, Jake |
|---|---|
| Advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A. |
Subjects
| Subject | CISAC |
|---|---|
| Subject | Prime Ministers |
| Subject | Britain |
| Subject | War Powers |
| Subject | constitutional conventions |
| Subject | war powers convention |
| Subject | political science |
| Subject | British foreign policy |
| Subject | British constitution |
| Subject | Iraq War |
| Subject | path dependence |
| Subject | critical junctures |
| Subject | historical institutionalism |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Dow, Jake. (2019). A Path Dependent Prerogative: Why British Prime Ministers Gave Up Their War Powers. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/qg915mn4898
Collection
Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses
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- Contact
- jakedow8@gmail.com
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