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Teemu Häkkinen, MA, doctoral student
The British Parliament and its role in Britain´s decision-making in going to war in 1982-2003 from viewpoints of argumentation and advising
In my doctoral dissertation, I shall concentrate on the British decision-making process in the decisions on going to war in 1982-2003 and in the political debate surrounding the decisions. In the British political system, the government led by the Prime Minister has a royal prerogative to wage war and the Parliament has no official role in the decisions to wage war. I shall compare different major military conflicts and Parliament’s ability to participate in decision-making processes by means of analyzing arguments used and advises given in the parliamentary debates. Attention will be paid both to House of Commons and to the House of Lords.
Major military conflicts to be studied are the Falklands War in 1982, the Gulf Crisis of 1990-1991 and the Iraq War which started in 2003. These three military conflicts will provide the suitable topics for comparative study. The primary sources will consist of parliamentary debates recorded by British Hansard (the Official Record) and different parliamentary papers provided by House of Commons Parliamentary Papers database. Newspapers will be used as primary sources in order to contextualize different speech-acts found in parliamentary debates. The analysis will employ the methods of political history and the history of political thought.
My dissertation study is due to be published in spring 2013.
Teemu Häkkinen
Contact me via email:
teemu . hakkinen _at_ jyu.fi
[Direct link to Teemu´s information presented in Department´s own website.]