Daan Fonck

Parliamentary involvement, party ideology and majority-opposition bargaining: Belgian participation in multinational military operations

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of parliamentary involvement in troop deployment decisions on restrictions on military mandates by examining the Belgian contribution to the 2011 Libya intervention and the coalition against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. More specifically, we analyse (1) the effect of party ideology on mandate preferences, and (2) the impact of bargaining between majority and opposition parties on the outcome of mandate negotiations. Our case study demonstrates that left-wing parties show a strong inclination toward imposing restrictions on the use of military force beyond humanitarian goals, while right-wing preferences tend to depend on the national interests at stake in the operation. With regard to majority-opposition bargaining, our study shows that the impact of opposition parties is dependent on the degree of contention between government and opposition parties, as well as on the extent to which the executive needs to seek support across its own majority.

Parliamentary Diplomacy and Legislative-Executive Relations in EU Foreign Policy: Studying the European Parliament's Mediation of the Macedonian Political Crisis (2015-17): The European Parliament's Diplomacy in Macedonia

This article studies the co‐operation between parliamentary and executive diplomats in EU foreign policy. Building on transnational perspectives, the European Parliament is conceptualized as an actor capable of pursuing autonomous diplomatic behaviour through cross‐border agency over its elected representatives, its bureaucracy, as well as through European party federations. A novel framework is proposed, built around the hypothesis that parliamentary and executive actors co‐operate by exchanging institutional, information, legitimacy and access resources in order to reach their goals more effectively. To demonstrate the argument empirically, the article studies EU‐facilitated mediation talks in Macedonia (2015–17). Building on semi‐structured interviews with 27 key stakeholders, the analysis shows how during the different stages of the mediation, executive and parliamentary actors exchanged crucial diplomatic resources in order to effectively conclude and implement the so‐called Pržino‐agreements between the government and opposition parties.

Book Review: Diplomatic Sites: A Critical Enquiry

The relationship between IL and IR sometimes divides and unites the practitioners of both fields, because sometimes, IR practitioners seek to legitimise power through the language of IL, and on the other hand, international legal scholars use the language of IR to legitimise authority between states. And in this book, John Morss argues that both fields find themselves at the intersection of power politics (p. 125). However, this book is not only about the relationship between these two fields, but rather about a collectivist’s analysis of IL (p. 102), where at its centre, ‘self-determination is the international law of collectives par excellence (p. 89)’ – an objective that Morss achieves with sophisticated arguments in legal philosophy. The book seeks a radical departure from the current language of IL to tell the story of the mass movement of people and how IL should take collectives more seriously. The book is a pleasant read that provides a politico-philosophico approach to IL and zooms in on the concept of collectives – a form of mass movement of peoples in IL or ‘people in motion’ – in order to demonstrate that self-determination embodies the very concept of ‘a law of collectives’ (p. 95). The book proposes that selfdetermination in IL should be ‘radically rethought’ (p. 107) with a new language and grammar. In any event, Morss believes that both IR and IL should combine forces to ‘come to terms with collectives in their dark sides as well as in their bright sides’ (p. 134). The only notable criticism I can make of the book is a rather ‘positive one’, and that is that Morss at times engages in lengthy discussions of (competing) works to (de)construct his claim(s), and these discussions often feel like extended book reviews. But Morss is a skilful writer, and one can easily deduce that he has the entire corpus of academicians in the social sciences in mind as he writes about and interprets the rather perplexing field of IL that is hard to pin down. Nevertheless, International Law as the Law of Collectives does not actually address the core problem faced by the contemporary movement of peoples in their quest for recognised identity. Instead, the book serves to highlight further twists in the puzzle and the struggle between power politics and IL as peoples in places such as frozen conflict zones or the Palestine problem continue their quest for nationhood/statehood within IL.