University of Wisconsin–Madison

Category: Politics within the judicial system

Gibler & Randazzo (2011). Testing the effects of independent judiciaries on the likelihood of democratic backsliding.

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Gibler, D. M., & Randazzo, K. A. (2011). Testing the effects of independent judiciaries on the likelihood of democratic backsliding. American Journal of Political Science, 55(3), 696-709. The authors test the efficacy of judicial independence in preventing regime reversals toward authoritarianism. Using a dataset of judicial constraints across 163 different countries from 1960 to 2000, they find …

Bakiner (2020). “Endogenous sources of judicial power: parapolitics and the Supreme Court of Colombia.”

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Bakiner, O. (2020). Endogenous sources of judicial power: parapolitics and the Supreme Court of Colombia. Comparative Politics, 52(4), 603-624. Courts’ legal-constitutional authority, strategic interactions with elected branches, and ideational factors are acknowledged as rival theoretical frameworks of judicial power, i.e. courts’ legal and practical power to make and enforce decisions, including politically assertive ones. This …

Kapiszewski (2011). “Tactical balancing: High court decision making on politically crucial cases.” 

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Kapiszewski, D. (2011). Tactical balancing: High court decision making on politically crucial cases. Law & Society Review, 45(2), 471-506. This article advances a new account of judicial behavior: the thesis of tactical balancing. Building on existing models of judicial decision making, the thesis posits that high court justices balance a discrete set of considerations—justices’ ideologies, their institutional …

Hilbink (2012), “The origins of positive judicial independence”

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Hilbink argues that positive judicial independence—which she defines as judges’ willingness to assert legal authority against powerful actors—cannot be explained solely by political fragmentation or formal institutional arrangements. Drawing on comparative evidence and detailed case studies of Spain and Chile, she shows that judges often behave contrary to what strategic models predict: some assert themselves …

Domingos (2000), “Judicial Independence: The Politics of the Supreme Court in Mexico”

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This article examines the role of the Supreme Court in the development of the Mexican political system. The judiciary provided an important source of regime legitimation, as it allowed for the consolidation of a state of legality and a claim to constitutional rule of law, at least in discourse. However, the judiciary was in effect …

Trochev (2024). “Pliant Courts, Recalcitrant Chiefs and Judicial Clientelism in Authoritarian Regimes”.

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Trochev, Alexei, ‘Pliant Courts, Recalcitrant Chiefs and Judicial Clientelism in Authoritarian Regimes’, in Björn Dressel, Raul Sanchez-Urribarri, and Alexander Stroh-Steckelberg (eds), Informality and Courts: Comparative Perspectives (Edinburgh, 2024; online edn, Edinburgh Scholarship Online, 18 Sept. 2025), https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781399535250.003.0005, accessed 6 Oct. 2025. How and why do some autocracies have pliant courts yet recalcitrant judicial chiefs? Trochev argue that is an unexpected consequence of empowering the …

Holgado & Urribarri (2024), “The Dark Side of Legalism: Abuse of the Law and Democratic Erosion in Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela”.

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Holgado, B. G., & Urribarri, R. S. (2024). The Dark Side of Legalism: Abuse of the Law and Democratic Erosion in Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela. American Behavioral Scientist, 68(12), 1578-1596. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642241268332 (Original work published 2024) The article investigates why some elected leaders successfully employ legalistic strategies to erode democracy from within and under what conditions …

Michelson & Li (2012). “Judicial performance without independence: the delivery of justice and political legitimacy in rural China”..

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Michelson, E., & Li, K. (2012, May). Judicial performance without independence: the delivery of justice and political legitimacy in rural China. In Prepared for workshop on works-in-progress on Chinese law. The debate over whether weak judicial independence undermines judicial performance and regime legitimacy in authoritarian contexts remains unresolved. Using survey data from 23 Chinese villages in …

Piana (2010), “Judicial Accountabilities in New Europe: From Rule of Law to Quality of Justice.”

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Daniela Piana, Judicial Accountabilities in New Europe: From Rule of Law to Quality of Justice (1st ed.). London: Routledge, 2010.  Summary: This volume focuses on a highly challenging aspect of all European democracies, namely the issue of combining guarantees of judicial independence and mechanisms of judicial accountability. It does so by filling the gap in European …

Li, Wang (2023), “Judicial Recentralization as Political Control: Evidence from the Judicial Leader Rotation in China.”

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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 …