Attending to control? International parliamentary institutions and parliamentary oversight of foreign affairs

Abstract Traditionally dominated by the executives, parliaments increasingly push for a more active role in multilateral affairs through International Parliamentary Institutions (IPIs). Conceptual research has argued that IPIs improve the democratic legitimacy of IOs by strengthening the accountability of IOs, as they allow parliamentary oversight over executives. Empirically, it remains unclear if IPIs are accomplishing this task. This paper provides further evidence in this regard. I theoretically derive the hypothesis that IPIs help legislators to hold the executives from their own country to account within the context of an IO. This happens by way of improved access to otherwise scarce information. I test this hypothesis on a novel dataset including three IOs (NATO, OSCE, Council of Europe) and their respective IPIs. For the German case, I show that legislators who are part of an IPI delegation ask more questions to the foreign ministries, but that this effect is likely driven by self-selection. Further exploratory qualitative interview evidence suggest that legislators do not attend IPIs to improve their parliamentary oversight capacity, but rather to engage in informal diplomacy. My findings add further nuance to our understanding of IPIs as source of information for MPs active in foreign affairs and their role in extending multilateral diplomacy.