GUARDINT Oversight and intelligence networks: Who guards the guardians?

• Applicants: Dr. Leonie Ansems de Vries; Professorin Dr. Claudia Aradau; Professorin Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche; Professor Dr. Didier Bigo, Ph.D.; Professorin Dr. Jeanette Hofmann; Dr. Thorsten Wetzling
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Empirical Social Research ; Public Law ; Sociological Theory
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 396819157

The project partners will examine the challenges and potential improvements regarding the efficient practice of intelligence oversight in the age of digitization and international security cooperation. Research on intelligence oversight remains predominantly focused on national entities and is rarely interdisciplinary. The reference object of oversight is almost entirely national and there is hardly any exchange, let alone cooperation between different national oversight bodies. This discrepancy between international security cooperation on the one hand and the rather fragmented oversight practice and research on the other hand, is the starting point for this project. The project pursues four objectives: First, to provide a sound theoretical basis for the extended and complex spectrum of executive action and the practice of oversight. This will be done by applying an International Political Sociology (IPS) approach which combines democratic theory with sociological perspectives on transnational practice. Second, the project will administer qualitative case studies on the oversight and accountability regimes in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. This will feed into an online database on national and international jurisprudence on surveillance and intelligence in Europe to be accessed by oversight practitioners, members of civil society and academia. Third, we will analyse and visualise transnational intelligence networks and their data sharing processes as well as the oversight mandates and accountability gaps regarding these networked practices. Finally, we will develop a methodology for a composite intelligence oversight index to help advance comparative research on the hitherto underanalysed subject matter. The project will also develop concrete recommendations for more oversight cooperation and for a more effective performance of intelligence oversight.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, United Kingdom