Going to war democratically: lessons for Australia from Canada and the UK

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the role of democracy in Australia’s foreign policy formation. It argues that public debate and deliberation on foreign policy is a normative good. When there is a lack of debate on a government decision, a democratic deficit occurs. Such a deficit is evident in the way Australia goes to war; however, the examples of Canada and the UK show that reforming parliamentary practice is possible. In the context of the ‘war on terror’, this article compares Australia, Canada, and the UK from 2001 to 2015 with regards to ‘war powers’. Drawing from debates recorded in Hansard, it finds that while Canada and the UK took steps to ‘parliamentarise’ their foreign policy formation, the war-powers prerogative of the Australian government remained absolute. It concludes that increasing the role of parliament may go a long way towards democratising the decision of when Australia goes to war. This has practical as well as normative benefits, since it may prevent governments from entering wars that are unsupported by the public. At minimum, it will compel governments to engage more thoroughly in public debate about their proposed policies, and justify their decisions to the nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign policy
• war powers
• war on terror
• Australia
• democracy

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the constructive feedback from the editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal, as well as the insightful comments of Associate Professor Chengxin Pan and Dr Chris Mulherin on earlier drafts. I also thank Associate Professor Benjamin Isakhan for his ongoing support on this project as my thesis supervisor and for our discussions on the topic over the years. Any remaining errors, of course, are my own. S.D.G.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The difficulty of achieving this public consent means democracies are less likely to engage in conflict with other democracies. The argument that democracies do not fight each other is widely supported in relevant studies (e.g. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999; O’Neal and Russett 1999; Ray 1995). However, some studies go further and argue that democracies are less warlike overall than non-democracies (e.g. MacMillan 2003; Rummel 1995). While this article does not seek to contribute to ‘democratic peace’ debates directly, it does accepts the normative basis for many of these arguments on the benefits of democratising foreign policy formation.

2 Criticisms of Australia’s war power arrangements have a long history, and calls for reform have arisen periodically since 1985, when the Australian Democrats first introduced the Defence Amendment Bill (Mason 1985). Bills calling for parliamentary approval of military deployments were also tabled in 2003 and 2008, but all failed to gain support from the major parties (McKeown and Jordan 2010).

3 This article understands a parliamentary convention to mean a rule that, while not codified in law, is adhered to by common consensus within parliament (see Barry, Miragliotta, and Nwokora 2018).

4 Information on the mission can be found at: http://www.defence.gov.au/Operations/Okra/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter E. Mulherin

Peter E. Mulherin is a doctoral candidate in the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Australia. His research focuses on the forming of foreign policy in democracies, as well as international relations and Middle Eastern politics. His prior publications have appeared in the Middle East Journal, the Australian Journal of Political Science, and the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.