Overseen or Overlooked? Legislators, Armed Forces, and Democratic Accountability by David P. Auerswald, Philippe Lagassé, and Stephen M. Saideman

Civilian control of the military is fundamental to democracy. Yet, which civilians exercise that control, under which conditions, is poorly understood. Most scholarship has focused exclusively on the executive branch. In Overseen or Overlooked? Legislators, Armed Forces, and Democratic Accountability, David P. Auerswald, Philippe Lagassé, and Stephen M. Saideman argue that legislative oversight is just as important, particularly when executives harbor authoritarian impulses. To explain why some legislatures exercise more control over the armed forces than others, this compelling and well-researched book draws upon more than 280 interviews across fifteen established democracies, including those with Westminster-style parliaments (United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan), consensual democracies (Germany, Belgium, Finland, Norway, and Sweden), and presidential systems (Brazil, Chile, South Korea, France, and the United States). Surprisingly, the authors find that the type of political system and formal powers of the legislature are not the central determinants of oversight. Instead, the number of oversight bodies that exist, their mandates, and the degree to which the executive controls them explain the degree of oversight legislatures perform. The most extensive oversight occurs in United States and Germany, where legislatures have multiple committees that are exclusively dedicated to defense and free of executive control.