The Tug-of-War over Drone Strike Oversight: Congress and the Politics of Drone Warfare during the Obama Presidency

Abstract Despite the increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in counter-terror operations, executive-legislative relations, intelligence oversight, and war powers regarding drone strikes have received scarce scholarly interest. Our article contributes to filling this gap and focuses on the politics of congressional oversight of drone warfare—in particular those operations conducted by the CIA (Title 50 operations) during the Obama administration. We apply the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to conduct an interpretive case study and shed light on our central research question: How can we explain the timing and limited extent of changes with regard to congressional oversight of drone strikes during the Obama presidency? While this policy area is traditionally depicted as one of executive dominance and legislative acquiescence, we analyze how congressional entrepreneurs used a policy window in the wake of John Brennan’s confirmation hearings for CIA Director in 2013 to set the agenda on congressional oversight of drone strikes, and thereby contest executive policy-making. Congress enacted limited changes to drone strike oversight and pressured President Obama to increase transparency. At the same time, further limitations, most notably to consolidate drone strike oversight by ending the CIA drone program, were defeated by senior leaders in Congress. Our study thus contends that congressional entrepreneurs played a key role for both change and continuity regarding drone warfare oversight.