Speaker
Description
Closed panel paper proposal: paper abstract
This study brings together the literature of intelligence studies and institutional theory to illuminate the conflict between intelligence agencies and their overseeing accountants as rooted in conflicting institutional logics. Public expectations of democratization of intelligence agencies with respect to increased openness and transparency have resulted in more overseeing to ensure their accountability. And while intelligence studies have provided important insight into the resulting conflicts as intelligence agencies attempt to resist increased control, this literature builds on the notion of an institutional principal-agent relationship, hence assuming that the accountable and their accountants are parts of the same institutional body. Alternatively, we draw on insights from the literature on institutional logics that would approach the two agencies as constitutive of fundamentally distinct mandates in society and, resultingly, comprised of distinct sets of institutionalized norms, values, beliefs, and practices. In applying this framework to the analysis of a case of rare exposure of conflict between the Danish Defence Intelligence Service and the Danish Intelligence Oversight Board, we demonstrate that institutionalised oversight mechanisms and legislation alone are not sufficiently promoting democratic accountability. The institutional logics of intelligence services and their overseers have a significant impact on the actual practice of democratic accountability.
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Political theory, institutional theory |
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| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
| Are you a PhD student or early-career researcher? | Yes |
