Comparing Intelligence Accountability

This chapter reviews the literature of intelligence accountability, reviews different theories, and introduces readers to key terms such as oversight, review, control, and governance. This book complements the process of intelligence oversight—the practice of holding ISAs to account, whereby ISAs have to justify their activities—with other types and levels of accountability. Typologically, accountability bodies differ by ways and methods they use to hold ISAs accountable: they can review, oversee, or control Intelligence and Security Agencies (ISA), and/or accept and address complaints concerning actions or activities of an ISA. Although conventionally they assessed compliance within an intelligence community, as of late they have been performing additional functions, such as promoting innovation. The different types of accountability are complemented by various layers in which Intelligence and Security Agencies are held accountable: internal, managerial, and external. The chapter introduces readers to the institutional architecture of intelligence accountability: legislative committees, judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, bureaucratic and administrative bodies, and executive oversight. It goes on to review intelligence accountability frameworks: laws, legislatures, the executive, the judiciary, the media, the public, civil society, and the democratic interest. The chapter closes on developments in international and supranational accountability cooperation.

Israel

This chapter focuses on a case of nationwide proportional representation. In Israel, all members of the 120-seat Knesset are elected in a single nationwide district under closed party lists. Due to this electoral system design, the geographic location of votes does not matter for a party’s overall seat total, and candidates have almost no incentive to develop a personal vote. The chapter finds strong support for the expertise model in how the Labor Party assigns members to legislative committees, but relatively little support in the Likud Party. Both parties exhibit strong issue ownership tendencies.

Party Personnel Strategies

The chapter introduces the notion of “party personnel strategies.” The concept refers to the process by which political parties allocate their elected members to legislative committees. The theory is grounded in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. The legislators are the pool of “personnel” from which the party draws when staffing specialized standing committees of the legislature. Party strategy is conditioned by both policy goals and the imperatives of the electoral system under which seats are won. Parties engage in a “personnel practice,” which is their observed pattern of assigning members with certain individual background characteristics to given committees. The chapter establishes the cases on which the book’s arguments are tested: Britain, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Portugal. The chapter lists the elections and the thirteen major political parties covered for each country.

Party Personnel Strategies

The book develops the notion of “party personnel strategies”, which are the ways in which political parties assign their elected members—their “personnel”—to serve collective organizational goals. Key party goals are to advance a policy brand and maximize seats in the legislature. We offer a theory of how assignments of members to specialized legislative committees contribute to these goals. Individual members vary in their personal attributes, such as prior occupation, gender, and local experience. Parties seek to harness the attributes of their members by assigning them to committees where members’ expertise is relevant; doing so may enhance the party’s policy brand. Under some electoral systems, parties may need to trade off the harnessing of expertise against the pursuit of seats, instead matching legislators according to electoral situation (e.g., marginality of seat) or characteristics of their constituency (e.g., population density). The book offers analysis of the extent to which parties trade of these goals by matching the attributes of their personnel and their electoral needs to the functions of the available committee seats. The analysis is based on a dataset of around 6,000 legislators across thirty-eight elections in six established parliamentary democracies with diverse electoral systems.

Germany

This chapter tests the book’s premises on a case of mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) representation, using the case of legislative committees in the Bundestag of Germany. Its results cover the two largest parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party. German parties should have a strong tendency to use the expertise model, because the MMP system means that votes cast anywhere in the country are of approximately equal value in maximizing seats. Thus, parties are able to emphasize their national reputation for policy, for which matching the expertise of their personnel to committee function is valuable. The MMP system also creates local single-seat districts in which nearly half of members are elected. Thus, aspects of the electoral–constituency model also should apply, as parties seek to develop connections to constituencies through local and personal vote of their legislators. The results offer strong support for the premises of the theory.

Legislative Investigations into Propaganda Activities (1919–1941)

The present work analyzes the complex relationship that was established during the interwar period between the American press and the legislative committees which investigated the propaganda activities of subversive movements and large private corporations during those years. The investigation is the result of the examination of journalistic sources and documentary evidence recently collected from various US federal and state archives. The main hypothesis is that the struggle against propaganda by both the press and the legislative committees became a new form of manipulation of public opinion, enabling politicians and reporters to exploit people’s aversion to the new persuasion techniques in order to satisfy their own personal interests and ideological purposes.

Women in Legislative Committees in Arab Parliaments

Extant studies have predominantly focused on women's numerical presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)'s legislatures, yet, research examining the role played by female politicians continues to be limited. To bridge this gap, we study one of the most important, albeit overlooked, bodies within these assemblies: legislative committees. Using an original dataset on committee memberships (n=4580), our data show that females are significantly marginalized from influential committees and tend to be sidelined to social issues and women's committees. To explain this, we develop a theory of provisional gender stereotyping. We argue that the duration of quota implementation shapes women's access to influential committees. We focus on two mechanisms to support our argument: a redistribution of power dynamics within legislative bodies and women's political expertise.