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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. 1