Working Papers

Public backlash against international organizations (IO) is increasingly commonplace in global politics. Whether such hostility results from the actions of IOs themselves, however, is difficult to isolate from other plausible explanations of anti-globalization sentiment. To theoretically specify this causal pathway, we focus on international courts for their generalizability across IOs and their role in enforcing regime rules. We argue that international court decisions against governments may cause a decrease in public support for an IO, as such jurisprudence directly places an international agreement in opposition to democratically-elected policymakers and, by extension, their voters. Leveraging a Court of Justice of European Union ruling invalidating elements of the Polish government’s judicial reforms that overlapped the Spring 2023 Eurobarometer survey, we find that trust in the European Union decreased following the decision, most prominently among government supporters. Our results suggest that enforcing regime rules may at times entail public legitimacy costs for IOs.

Education is foundational to democratic citizenship, fostering civic engagement and institutional trust. Yet in hybrid regimes, where democratic institutions coexist with authoritarian practices, education may induce skepticism rather than deference toward state authority. Courts are especially vulnerable in these settings, often manipulated as tools of executive control. We argue that educated citizens are more aware of such malfeasance and more likely to demand accountability from political elites, leading to asymmetric support for judicial power. That is, they are less likely to believe they should obey court decisions against them (vertical power) because of their awareness of institutional manipulation, but more likely to support judicial checks on executive authority (horizontal power). We use eight rounds of Afrobarometer data from 32 hybrid regimes and leverage Zimbabwe’s 1980 education reform to support our account. We highlight how regime type is a critical condition for understanding how education shapes public support for judicial power.

Governments create monitoring entities to ensure that policymakers are working effectively. Increasing transparency in the retention and selection of policymakers, however, may create incentives that lead to sub-optimal outcomes. One such entity is a “merit commission” (also known as a judicial council) that evaluates judges subject to reten- tion and/or selection. How do merit commissions affect judicial behavior? Using a formal model, we show that lower-competence incumbent judges only subject to merit retention will complete cases more quickly at the expense of quality opinion writing, as their productivity is a signal of their effort. Conversely, judges subject to merit selection and subsequent retention will not make the same tradeoff, as it is more costly for a commission to negatively evaluate a judge upon retention after it has already selected them. We provide evidence leveraging the Article 255 panel for (re)appointments to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

EU law and politics research is caught between two competing narratives: a progressive narrative of self-reinforcing legal integration and a more law-abiding Union, and a regressive narrative of dissensus and legal disintegration. In this paper, we suggest an alternative theory of “intercurrence”. We argue that intercurrence arises when overlapping legal orders become unevenly aligned with salient political cleavages, transforming these legal conflicts in larger political battles. We illustrate the purchase and scope conditions of our theory via two empirical case studies: the evolving tensions between the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and national courts, and the erosion and contestation of EU law enforcement after the 2004 enlargement. Our findings reveal that while the EU’s legal order is not self-sustaining, legal challenges remain contained, implying that intercurrence does not necessarily foreshadow disintegration.

Legal traditions shape citizens’ relationships with their courts. Building upon scholarship examining how common law and civil law systems affect a variety of economic and political outcomes, we ask whether legal traditions affect citizens’ support for judicial power. Relative to common law, we argue that civil law judiciaries may appear to citizens as unfairly favoring the state, ignoring the context of their specific cases, and inefficient, thus dampening their willingness to obey court decisions. To test our theory, we leverage variation in legal tradition across 33 African states and Afrobarometer survey data across six survey rounds with over 200,000 respondents. We find in civil law countries that citizens’ perceptions that the law treats people unequally mediates their lower support for vertical judicial power relative to common law countries.

The judiciary is frequently reliant on executive and legislative bodies to implement its decisions. Scholars argue that public trust in the judiciary helps compel the other branches to comply. As noncompliance may erode public trust, courts are sensitive to government threats to not implement their decisions. Public trust, however, is also contingent on a court maintaining a consistent case law, which may require it making unpopular decisions that risk government noncompliance. How can courts manage this tension? I argue that when the legal merits favor a ruling against a government’s preferences and the threat of noncompliance is high a court will provide the government more flexibility in implementing its ruling. This strategy allows courts to build public trust through the appearance of government compliance, while also building trust by advancing case law in a legally consistent manner. An analysis of Court of Justice of the European Union decisions provides evidence supporting this account.