Aguiar Aguilar, A. A. (2023). Courts and the judicial erosion of democracy in Latin America. Politics & Policy, 51(1), 7-25.
How are courts used to erode democracy? Using the literature on democratic backsliding and judicial politics as a theoretical framework, in this work, Aguiar Aguilar shows the path of how courts are captured by incumbents and then used to subvert democracy. Comparing some cases from the Latin American region, the author contends that the judicial erosion of democracy unfolds in three interactive steps: incumbents (a) lead public attacks on the judiciary; (b) push judicial purges; and/or (c) pack the courts, then they use the new weakened high court to undermine democratic institutions legally and harass political opponents.