[1] Legislative oversight is one way to finesse this contradiction—that the public may not be able to directly monitor the executive branch, but legislators do so on its behalf, as in the American case. The U.S. Congress has at least six committees that conduct some form of oversight of U.S. national defense agencies. [2] Today, legislative oversight increasingly depends on partisan control of each congressional chamber. The American case might suggest that significant legislative oversight over the armed forces is normal in democracies, but, as we found in our research, the norm is actually one of much weaker scrutiny by most legislatures. Of the democracies we studied, only the Bundestag has an impact on line-items in the defense budget akin to that of the American legislature.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 05, 2023 05:05 UTC