Governing Abroad by Sibel Oktay

Author:Sibel Oktay [Oktay, Sibel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL015000 POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Process / Political Parties
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2022-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

The Dutch involvement in the 2003 Iraq war speaks to the broader debates on coalition foreign policy in important ways. First, it provides a good window to observe how assertive commitments are possible in the contexts where we least expect them. The case study presented in this chapter shows where the veto players logic falls short of explaining the commitment decisions of minimum-winning coalitions, especially when they suffer from ideological disparities.

Logrolling provides a strong alternative explanation to make sense of this finding. It allows parties from diverse political backgrounds and with different policy positions to still commit decisively in foreign affairs, including high-profile military operations. Existing research often understands “logrolling in the context of bargaining for the formation of coalitions where side-payments are only instruments for entering the majority coalition.”458 The immediate anticipation of joining the government forces junior partners to concede the same foreign policy issues on which they originally had firm positions, a major “side-payment” to the senior partner, indeed.

This remains the strongest explanation for the Dutch decisions between 2002 and 2003 despite the public’s disapproval of the war and the visible Page 149 →assertiveness of the foreign minister, especially at the earlier stages of the national debate on the country’s involvement in the war. While the Netherlands’ historical relationship with the United States constituted a hospitable environment for its decision to provide political support for the war, the evidence presented here shows that its incremental increase in commitments, despite the lack of a UN mandate, was made possible by the dynamics of coalition politics.

Second, and relatedly, the Dutch episode defeats a possible alternative mechanism, namely, junior party hijacking. Junior parties assume a pivotal role in minimum-winning arrangements. The survival of the coalition depends on them because only with them can the coalition clear the majority threshold in the parliament. This gives junior parties disproportionate influence in the decision-making process. Their ability to blackmail the other partners with withdrawal allows them to hijack the coalition and pull it closer to their own preference point. The Dutch case, however, shows the weakness of such a decision by shedding light on the gray zones of government. Had any of the parties in either of the three minimum-winning arrangements wanted to prevent the Dutch commitments in the Iraq war, they were in a perfectly suitable position to do so. That these commitments took place, then, can be explained primarily by the conscious decisions of the political parties, specifically the PvdA and the D66. Although the PvdA, and later on the D66, were pivotal to the survival of their respective coalitions, these parties were also forced to make their own decisions regarding the Iraq war in the thick of the government formation process. They were put in a difficult position by having to choose between getting a seat at the executive table and playing “principled politics” by maintaining their opposition against Dutch involvement in the war. When it was time to make a decision, both of these junior parties chose office over principles.

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