Parliamentary scrutiny of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy: a comparison of Estonian Riigikogu and Finnish Eduskunta
Kuupäev
2017
Autorid
Ajakirja pealkiri
Ajakirja ISSN
Köite pealkiri
Kirjastaja
Tartu Ülikool
Abstrakt
The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union (EU) is
considered to be an intergovernmental policy at the European level and a domain of the
executive at the national level. Yet, despite the prerogative of the executive, there is still
parliamentary scrutiny of CFSP, but it has received little academic attention, although
there is a growing debate about the democratic deficit of the policy that the Lisbon Treaty
attempted to alleviate. This research offers insight into how national parliaments
scrutinise CFSP by comparing the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Estonian Riigikogu
and Finnish Eduskunta. Usually both are considered by the scholarly literature strong
scrutinisers and both have similar formal powers and mandating-systems of CFSP
scrutiny. Yet, similarities in the formal setup notwithstanding, there still seems to be a
difference in how the two parliaments engage in CFSP scrutiny with Riigikogu described
as a rubber stamp and Eduskunta an active policy shaper.
This discrepancy can be explained by the fact that the literature on parliamentary scrutiny
of EU affairs has focused mostly on the formal powers that the parliaments have. In
contrast this study concentrates not only on the legal rights and capabilities, but
emphasises the role of the informal factors that affect the level of scrutiny of CFSP. It
argues that as CFSP is a EU policy with less automatic parliamentary scrutiny than other
policy fields, informal factors such as attitude and willingness of the parliamentarians to
engage in CFSP scrutiny and motivational factors play a more important role. Through
expert interviews and the analytical framework developed by Born and Hänggi that takes
into account authority, ability and attitude, this research concludes that attitude and the
willingness of parliamentarians to engage in CFSP scrutiny explains the difference of the
levels of scrutiny of CFSP of Riigikogu and Eduskunta. These findings support the new
institutionalist theory of sociological institutionalism that emphasises the role of culture,
role perception and institutional identity as determining the level of parliamentary
scrutiny.