Wolfgang Wagner

• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Liberal interventionism is in crisis, being weakened both from within and without. From Kabul to Kyiv and beyond, the contributions to our thematic issue reveal that the crisis of liberal interventionism has unraveled differently than previously understood. In countries of the Global North, it stretched out in different ways, depending on the polit...

The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis repositions the subfield of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) to a central analytic location within the study of International Relations (IR). Over the last twenty years, IR has seen a cross-theoretical turn towards incorporating domestic politics, decision-making, agency, practices, and subjectivity—the s...

This research note introduces the International Treaty Ratification Votes Database (ITRVD), which covers more than 6,000 votes on the ratification of international treaties in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the USA between 1990 and 2019. In addition, the database presents data on the voting...

The Parliamentary Deployment Votes Database provides data on the voting behaviour of 301 political parties in 1,022 parliamentary votes on military missions between 1990 and 2019 in 21 countries of the Global North. This special data feature introduces the database and presents descriptive statistics and basic patterns on some of its key variables:...

Existing literature has examined party positions on several military interventions across various countries, mostly using manifestos and expert surveys as sources of data. This article employs a different approach by analysing German parties’ positions on one mission only: the Afghanistan intervention (2001–2021). We extract positions from parliame...

The heterogeneity of foreign policy preferences has hampered a more effective Common Foreign and Security Policy. We examine the dimensionality of the EU foreign policy space by analyzing foreign policy votes in the European Parliament (1999–2019). As it contains the EU’s full geographical and ideological diversity, it is an important laboratory fo...

The USA is one of the “geopolitical others” of the European Union. Different geopolitical worldviews and normative commitments, therefore, often clash when relations with the USA are at stake. Whereas most analyses focus on differences between EU member states and their foreign policy traditions, this paper examines to what extent and in what way p...

The positions of political parties in various foreign policy questions and how such ideological stances matter in foreign and security policy decision-making remain largely unexplored beyond the specific case of the United States. Reviewing the “state of the art” in foreign policy analysis and comparative politics, this introductory article discuss...

Recent rise of populist parties has brought about more contestation over development policy. There is also increasing diversity within the European Union (EU): some countries allocate more development aid while the contributions of newer member states are on average smaller. But do such national interests surface more often than in other issue area...

Votes in parliament reveal the degree to which foreign affairs are contested and politicized. Data from the US Congress since its first session in 1789 confirm the established narrative that foreign affairs have become politicized since the Vietnam War but also qualify the politicization narrative by showing that post-Vietnam levels of contestation...

According to a widely shared notion, foreign affairs are exempted from democratic politics, i.e., party-political divisions are overcome—and should be overcome—for the sake of a common national interest. This book shows that this is not the case. Examining votes in the US Congress and several European parliaments, the book demonstrates that contest...

The positions of political parties in various foreign policy questions and how such ideological stances matter in foreign and security policy decision-making remain largely unexplored beyond the specific case of the United States. Reviewing the 'state of the art' in foreign policy analysis and comparative politics, this introductory article discuss...

Updated version of our previously uploaded paper (forthcoming chapter) with minor number fixes.

Parliamentary votes on foreign and security policy have often been demonstrations of patriotism and national unity. These resonate with the notion that external relations are exempted from party politics, or that politics stops at the water's edge. Its supranational character makes the European Parliament a particularly interesting laboratory for s...

The concept of resilience helps to capture important changes in the EU’s policy towards its Southern neighbourhood. First, the EU no longer suggests that protracted crises will be overcome tout court. Instead, the EU can only help to cope with them. Second, the new leitmotif of resilience signals a shift in responsibilities. Rather than promoting a...

The concept of resilience helps to capture important changes in the EU’s policy towards its Southern neighborhood. First, the EU no longer suggests that protracted crises will be overcome tout court. Instead, the EU can only help to cope with them. Second, the new leitmotif of resilience signals a shift in responsibilities. Rather than promoting a...

The individualisation of punishment is a key element in liberal narratives about international law and international relations. This narrative has become an integral part of positive international law, especially the regimes governing the use of force and the prosecution of an international crimes. Rather than punishing states or entire societies,...

This paper contributes to current debates on the politicization of international politics by examining party-political contestation of peace and security missions. It is guided by two inter-related questions, (a) to what extent deployment decisions are contested amongst political parties and (b) what drives such contestation. We examine data from a...

This paper contributes to current debates on the politicization of international politics by examining party-political contestation of peace and security missions. It is guided by two interrelated questions, a) to what extent deployment decisions are contested amongst political parties and b) what drives such contestation. We examine data from a ne...

The individualization of punishment is a key element in liberal narratives about international law and international relations. By now, this narrative has become integral part of positive international law, especially the regimes governing the use of force and the prosecution of international crimes. Rather than punishing states or entire societies...

This article studies the effect of parliamentary involvement on security policy. Building on Democratic Peace Theory, it examines whether democracies with a parliamentary veto power are indeed less likely to participate in military interventions, than democracies without such a veto power, ceteris paribus. By studying patterns of participation acro...

The European Union is best understood as a liberal power - as an actor that is composed of liberal democracies whose interests, identities and institutions motivate and constrain its policy. The conceptualization of the EU as a liberal power helps to overcome three shortcomings of alternative notions such as civilian power or Normative Power Europe...

With more than 140 votes since the end of the Cold War, the Bundestag has been an exceptionally powerful and active parliament in controlling the deployment of armed forces. A closer look at the actual deployment votes shows that military missions are contested along a left/right axis: Whereas the radical left is consistently opposed, support grows...

Parliaments differ enormously in their foreign policy competences. This is best documented in the area of “war powers,” understood as decision-making on the use of force. In other issue areas, such as treaty-making, defense budgets, sanctions, or arms exports, differences across countries are far less researched. The available data, however, sugges...

It is customary to argue that foreign policy is very much dominated by the executive, with parliaments wielding limited influence. However, with the exception of the US Congress, legislative‒executive relations in the realm of foreign and security policy have attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Drawing on a principal‒agent framework, t...

The move from territorial defence to ‘wars of choice’ has influenced the domestic politics of military interventions. This paper examines the extent to which both the substance and the procedure of military interventions are contested among political parties. Regarding the substance, our analysis of Chapel Hill Expert Survey data demonstrates that...

A striking difference between the EU?s 2016 Global Strategy and its 2003 predecessor is the ubiquity of resilience as a new leitmotif, understood as the ability of states and societies to reform, thus withstanding and recovering from internal and external crisis. Resilience provides a middle ground between over-ambitious liberal peace-building and...

The notion that states’ foreign and security policies are not exclusively driven by material interests is now firmly established. Whose ideas matter and in what way, however, has remained subject to debate. We advance this debate by studying the crisis diplomacy of liberal democracies towards North Korea during four crises around the country’s viol...

Even though democracies by and large share the perception of Iran as a threat to peace and security, they disagree over the appropriate policy response. This paper examines why some democracies prefer accommodation while others plead for confrontation. Using a new data set on democracies' policies toward Iran in the 2000s, we assess the impact of p...

For the comparative study of the effects of electoral systems on the descriptive representation of ethnic minorities in parliament, Macedonia is a highly interesting case because the country had several elections under majoritarian as well as under proportional systems. Whereas most observers claim that ethnic Albanians have benefitted from the int...

Parliamentary involvement remains a key tool for the democratic control of executive policies. This article explores the web of parliamentary involvement in decision-making on European Union (EU) military operations, using insights gained in an in-depth case study on the EU's anti-piracy mission Atalanta. We find that parliaments at all levels beca...

Nach Einschätzung zahlreicher Beobachter ist die Bundestagswahl 2002 nicht zuletzt dadurch zugunsten der rot-grünen Koalition entschieden worden, dass die SPD in den letzten Wochen des Wahlkampfs ein außenpolitisches Thema in den Vordergrund stellte und sich eine in der Bevölkerung verbreitete Position zur amerikanischen Politik zu eigen machte. We...

In Kapitel 2 wurde Außenpolitik als soziales Handeln definiert, das sich aus der Wechselwirkung zwischen dem Handeln staatlicher Akteure und bestimmten strukturellen Vorgaben sowie dem Handeln anderer Akteure ergibt. Außenpolitik zielt in diesem Sinne auf die Ermöglichung und Herstellung kollektiv bindender Entscheidungen in den internationalen Bez...

Das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs und die Gründung der Bundesrepublik markierten einen gravierenden Einschnitt in der Geschichte Europas, mehr noch aber in der Geschichte deutscher Außenpolitik. Dies zeigt sich nicht zuletzt darin, dass die meisten Darstellungen deutscher Außenpolitik sich entweder mit der Zeit davor oder danach beschäftigen. Der Bru...

Schon bald nach dem Amtsantritt Michael Gorbatschows zeichnete sich ein Kurswechsel in der sowjetischen Politik ab, der auch eine kooperativere Haltung im Ost-West-Konflikt beinhaltete. In Abkehr der bis dahin gültigen Doktrin machte die sowjetische Führung auch deutlich, dass sie eine Demokratisierung und Liberalisierung der Staaten des Warschauer...

The merits and shortcomings of various electoral systems for post-conflict elections in divided societies have been debated extensively. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by moving ethnic composition, i.e. the number, size and settlement patterns of ethnic groups in a society, centre-stage as a context condition for list proportional rep...

Whereas the analysis of deviance is an established element in the study of domestic societies, it seems conspicuously absent from International Relations (IR), that is, the study of the international society of states. Sociologists have defined deviance as behavior that violates social norms and thus attracts disapproval and sanctions if detected.1...

How should the international community deal with so-called ‘rogue states’? This has been one of the most divisive questions in post Cold War security politics. It has repeatedly pitted the United States against China and Russia in the UN Security Council. Moreover, it has revealed deep cleavages within NATO and the EU.1 Controversies have emerged a...

Im Zentrum dieses vollständig aktualisierten Lehrbuchs steht die Analyse deutscher Außenpolitik. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf einer problemorientierten Einführung anhand gängiger theoretischer und methodischer Instrumentarien, wie sie in der Außenpolitikanalyse zur Anwendung kommen. Die Leserinnen und Leser sollen mit unterschiedlichen Herangehensweis...

Parliamentary oversight of the military constitutes an important element of the civilian control of the armed forces. However, the strength of parliaments in this realm varies greatly across democracies and little is known about the sources of this variation. We propose an explanation for one key aspect of this variation: why does parliament enjoy...

Die Idee von der Einhegung des Krieges durch die Demokratisierung staatlicher Herrschaft hat ihren Ursprung im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Sie findet sich in Montesquieu’s „Vom Geist der Gesetze“ (1748) ebenso wie in Tomas Paine’s Pamphlet „Common Sense“ (1776). Bis heute wird er aber vor allem mit Immanuel Kant in Verbindung gebracht.

The policies toward countries aspiring to acquire nuclear weapons continue to be heavily contested, differing even among countries that consider nuclear proliferation as one of the main threats to international security. This article maps the actual policies of liberal democracies toward Iran and North Korea along a continuum from confrontation to...

The policies toward countries aspiring to acquire nuclear weapons continue to be heavily contested, differing even among countries that consider nuclear proliferation as one of the main threats to international security. This article maps the actual policies of liberal democracies toward Iran and North Korea along a continuum from confrontation to...

Den Ansatz des akteurzentrierten Institutionalismus haben Renate Mayntz und Fritz Scharpf gemeinsam am Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung entwickelt. Aufgrund der zentralen Rolle, die der Ansatz den nationalen Regierungen in der Analyse europäischer Politik zuspricht, und aufgrund der Wertschätzung für die Spieltheorie als analytischem...

The distinction between negative and positive integration that has played a pivotal role in understanding the dynamics of the common market is also instrumental in explaining the dynamics of criminal law co-operation in the EU. Despite manifold differences between common market governance and criminal law cooperation, the introduction of mutual rec...

Parliamentary approval can be of crucial importance to ensure the democratic legitimacy of military operations as it can establish public consent to the executive's use of force. But involving parliament in decisions to deploy military forces may have negative repercussions on the efficiency of operations, e.g. by slowing down decision-making. As t...

The more important governmental cooperation and bureaucratic involvement become in ESDP, the more pressing becomes the issue of democratic control of executive cooperation. This article starts from the argument that parliamentary involvement in decision-making is of central importance for ensuring the democratic quality of ESDP. It uses the notion...

This article does not have an abstract

Over the last two decades or so, there has been a democratic turn in peace and conflict research, i.e. the peculiar impact of democratic politics on a wide range of security issues has attracted more and more attention. Many of these studies are inspired by Immanuel Kant's famous essay on Perpetual Peace. In this article, we present a critical disc...

Das Politikfeld „innere Sicherheit“1 hat sich in den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnten zu einem der dynamischsten der europäischen Integration entwickelt. Hiervon zeugen nicht nur die häufigen Vergleiche des Raums der Freiheit, der Sicherheit und des Rechts mit dem Binnenmarktprojekt (vgl. beispielsweise Lavenex/Wallace 2005: 458), sondern auch quantita...

The creation of the Single European Market has been accompanied by an intense discussion on whether market-creating measures have been privileged over market-correcting ones by the institutional system of the EU. The creation of an 'Area of Freedom, Security and Justice' (AFSJ) launched by the Treaty of Amsterdam poses a similar question which, how...

Seit den Anfängen der europäischen Integration in den 1950er Jahren hat sich die Europäische Union (bzw., bis 1993, die Europäische Gemeinschaft) zu einer zunehmend bedeutsamen Rahmenbedingung deutscher Außenpolitik entwickelt. Mittlerweile gibt es kaum einen Bereich der deutschen Außenbeziehungen mehr, dessen Behandlung in den europäischen Institu...

Since EU members have agreed to establish integrated military forces and to decide jointly on their deployment in European institutions, the EU’s “democratic deficit†is no longer confined to issues of common market governance but also includes foreign, security and defense politics. Drawing on recent debates in peace and conflict research, I...

Even though the member states have kept the European Union’s security and defense policy intergovernmental, there has been an emerging democratic deficit in this issue area. Given the standard version of the democratic deficit as a result from Qualified Majority Voting in the Council and from the delegation of competencies to supra-national institu...

One of the core principles of the liberal constitutional state, namely that the police must be subject to efficient parliamentary and judicial control, has been challenged by the establishment of a European Police Office (Europol). As with justice and home affairs co-operation more generally, Europol has deliberately been kept at arm's length from...

The development of a ESDP has raised concerns over the EU's identity as a `civilian power'. Whereas concerns over a gradual replacement of civilian policy instruments by military force have been most prevalent, this article focuses on a neglected dimension of the civilian power-concept, namely on the repercussions of the ESDP for the democratic con...

Seit 1990 haben sich die Rahmenbedingungen der Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik in allen Staaten Westeuropas und Nordamerikas umfassend und nachhaltig verändert.1 Innerhalb weniger Jahre sind die Abwehr und Abschreckung eines massiven militärischen Angriffs durch ein feindliches Militärbündnis durch die Herausforderung abgelöst worden, in regi...

Between the intergovernmental negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty of 1990/91 and the elaboration of a ‘Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’ of 2002–04, Germany’s policy on European security and defence has undergone some changes that go to the very identity of the federal republic. In terms of European policy, the German government has...

During the 15 years or so since the end of the Cold War and unification, Germany’s policy towards and within the European Union has undergone significant changes. Once the ‘Musterknabe of Europe’ (Le Gloannec, 1998, p. 21), Germany has become increasingly reluctant in supporting the progressive implementation of key projects of European integration...

Guided by a federalist vision of European integration, Germany used to be a staunch supporter of a European security and defence policy. Whereas Germany's rhetorical support has remained unchanged, it has turned into a laggard in implementing the commitments arising from a European Rapid Reaction Force. Drawing on an interactionist framework, this...

Since the end of the Cold War and unification, Germany's policy toward and within the European Union (EU) has undergone significant changes. Once a model “Europeanist,” Germany has become increasingly reluctant to support the progressive implementation of key projects of European integration. Neither an instance of a planned strategic change nor a...

Den Ansatz des akteurzentrierten Institutionalismus haben Renate Mayntz und Fritz Scharpf gemeinsam am Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung entwickelt. Aufgrund der zentralen Rolle, die der Ansatz den nationalen Regierungen in der Analyse europäischer Politik zuspricht, und aufgrund der Wertschätzung für die Spieltheorie als analytischem...

This essay joins the discussion on the liberal peace by exploring the effects of inter-democratic institutions on democracy and peace. We begin by arguing that the international organization of cooperation among democracies makes a distinctive contribution to the absence of war between democracies. At the same time, democracies are particularly vul...

This article does not have an abstract

This article extends democratic peace research, which has predominantly focused on the absence of war, to the field of internal security cooperation. It argues that the mechanisms suggested by democratic peace research (responsiveness of democratic leaders to public demands, democratic norms and culture, and institutional constraints) can also be a...

Critics have suggested communitarizing the European Union's common foreign and security policy in order to increase its effectiveness. Drawing on rationalist theories of regimes and institutional choice, this paper argues that the delegation of competencies to the EU's supranational institutions is unlikely to make European crisis management more e...

The powerful, directly-elected European Parliament is one of the most distinguishing features of the European Union. However, even the most elaborate theory of institutional choice, namely the rationalist institutional choice theory, is unable to explain why some member-states have held strong preferences for strengthening this institution. This ar...

Over the last two decades or so, there has been a "democratic turn" in peace and conflict research, i.e. the peculiar impact of democratic politics on a wide range of security issues has attracted more and more attention. Many of these studies are inspired by Immanuel Kant's famous essay on "Perpetual Peace". In this article, we present a critical...

[Summary]. Since the EU has assumed responsibility for military operations, questions of democratic legitimacy have become more prominent in European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Although democracy has been a contested concept, four ‘pillars’ can be distinguished that contribute to a democratically legitimate ESDP. This Occasional Paper anal...