Yan-Hao Lai, “Securitisation or Autocratisation? Hong Kong’s Rule of Law under the Shadow of China’s Authoritarian Governance.” Journal of Asian and African Studies, vol. 58, no. 1 (2022): 8-25. Summary: This article examines the nature of the legal system in Hong Kong and its process of autocratisation under the Chinese sovereign. This article suggests that, …
Maria Joshua, “Justifications of Repression in Autocracies: An Empirical Analysis of Morocco and Tunisia, 2000–2010.” Contemporary Politics, vol. 30, no.1 (2023): 108–36 Summary: How do autocrats communicate about repression? Previous studies have analysed how autocratic officials justify the repression of large-scale protests to avoid backlash effects. However, we know much less about how everyday repression …
Zeren Li, Zeyuan Wang, “Judicial Recentralization as Political Control: Evidence from the Judicial Leader Rotation in China.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 104, no.4 (2023): 669–683. Summary: This study analyzes how authoritarian leaders use the judicial system to solve the principal–agent problem in the government hierarchy. The authors argue that autocrats recentralize court personnel to enhance …
Julio Ríos-Figueroa, Paloma Aguilar, “Justice Institutions in Autocracies: A Framework for Analysis.” Democratization, vol. 25, no. 1 (2017): 1–18. Summary: What role do justice institutions play in autocracies? The authors bring together the literatures on authoritarian political institutions and on judicial politics to create a framework to answer this question. They start from the premise …
Leonardo Puleo, Ramona Coman, “Explaining Judges’ Opposition When Judicial Independence Is Undermined: Insights from Poland, Romania, and Hungary.” Democratization, vol. 31, no. 1 (2023): 47–69. Summary: Over the past decade, governing parties in Central and Eastern Europe have dismantled liberal democracy, violating the rule of law and limiting the power of judges. This article examines …
Mert Arslanalp, T. Deniz Erkmen, “Mobile Emergency Rule in Turkey: Legal Repression of Protests during Authoritarian Transformation.” Democratization, vol. 27, no. 6 (2020): 947–69. Summary: One of the challenges of autocratizing governments in regimes with nominally democratic institutions is how to repress fundamental democratic rights while claiming to uphold the rule of law. Post-9/11 socio-legal …
Laura Gamboa, Benjamín García-Holgado, Ezequiel González-Ocantos, “Courts against Backsliding: Lessons from Latin America.” Law & Policy, vol. 46, no. 4 (2024): 358–379. Summary: The recent wave of autocratization in Latin America has put courts at the center of debates about regime and regime change. Much of the literature on the judicial politics of democratic backsliding focuses …
Björn Dressel, Tomoo Inoue, Cristina Regina Bonoan, “Justices and Political Loyalties: An Empirical Investigation of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, 1987–2020.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 49, no. 2 (2024): 955–79. Summary: The Philippine Supreme Court is considered one of Asia’s most activist courts. During the regime of President Rodrigo Duterte (2016–22), however, concerns grew …
Surabhi Chopra, “Judging the Troops: Exceptional Security Measures and Judicial Impact in India.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 44, no. 3 (2019): 555–85. Summary: This Article examines a controversial national security measure: the use of the armed forces within domestic borders. Military policing blurs the boundaries between crime and war, and tends to entail greater use …
Dave Bridge, Curt Nichols, “Congressional Attacks on the Supreme Court: A Mechanism to Maintain, Build, and Consolidate.” Law & Social Inquiry, vol. 41, no. 1 (2016): 100–125. Summary: Reexamination and reinterpretation of the “mature” (1955–1984) New Deal era of congressional attacks on the Supreme Court reveals a new hypothesis: that Court‐curbing efforts played a previously unrecognized …