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5 Harv. Nat'l Sec. J. 1 (2014)

handle is hein.journals/harvardnsj5 and id is 1 raw text is: 2014 Double Government

ARTICLE
National Security and Double Government
Michael J. Glennon*
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the
great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control
the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself
-James Madison'
Abstract
National security policy in the United States has remained largely constant
from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration. This continuity
can be explained by the double government theory of 19th-century
scholar of the English Constitution Walter Bagehot. As applied to the
United States, Bagehot's theory suggests that U.S. national security policy
is defined by the network of executive officials who manage the
departments and agencies responsible for protecting U.S. national security
and who, responding to structural incentives embedded in the U.S. political
system, operate largely removed from public view and from constitutional
constraints. The public believes that the constitutionally-established
institutions control national security policy, but that view is mistaken.
Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight is dysfunctional; and
presidential control is nominal. Absent a more informed and engaged
* Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.
Thanks to Artin Afkhami, Ashley Belyea, Julia Brooks, Mike Eckel, lan Johnstone, Robert
Hillman, William Martel, John Perry, Luca Urech, and Fletcher political science workshop
participants for comments on an earlier draft; to Beaudre Barnes, Claudio Guler, and
Cecilia Vogel for research assistance; and to innumerable Trumanites and Madisonians,
past and present, with whom I have worked and spoken over the years. Those associations
and my own experience provide the backdrop of this Article. Mistakes and opinions are my
own.
' THE FEDERALIST No. 51 (James Madison).

Copyright C 2014 by the Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College
and Michael J. Glennon.

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