The war on terror and the growth of executive power?: a comparative analysis

In: Routledge advances in international relations and global politics, 86

Abstract

Terrorism has become a global phenomenon over recent decades. The attacks on the United States in 2001 prompted a 'global war on terror', the implementation of which has led to a significant aggrandizement of executive power in the US at the expense of the legislature, ostensibly the 'most powerful' representative assembly in the world. In this volume, seasoned scholars focus on the effects of terrorism and antiterrorism on executive-legislative relations in a range of countries whose citizens have experienced terrorism, including those from Australia, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Russia, and the UK. Has the pattern of accretion of executive power in the United States been replicated in all these systems? Or have other institutional and other factors, including the structure of the party system and the specific coalitional nature of the governments, served to mitigate changes in the balance of legislative and executive power in these systems? The volume, which is based on original research, reaches some surprising conclusions, which disabuse expectations based on the US experience.