Many argue that during conflict, executive power expands at the expense of the judiciary and civil liberties. Although this is a common conjecture, no systematic study of conflict and judicial independence exists. We argue that conflict, rather than strictly inhibiting independence, is instead a critical juncture that increases the possibility of institutional change, either positive or negative. We assess this claim in three ways: cross-national analyses of (1) de facto and (2) de jure judicial independence after the onset of conflict, and (3) a case study of statutory and jurisdictional changes to the federal judiciary after the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War. Each illustrates that conflict onset is associated with a higher likelihood of changing levels—both decreases and increases—rather than unidirectional decreases in judicial independence. We then present preliminary hypotheses and analyses for three factors that, given conflict onset, should be associated with either improved or worsened conditions for the judiciary. This study has implications for research on conflict, courts, and the rule of law in both political science and legal studies.
Authoritarian regimes are not known for adopting independent courts, yet the frequency of states empowering their judiciaries has steadily increased. In 1961 only 9% of autocracies had a partially or fully independent court, but by 1987 more than one-third of authoritarian states had reformed their judiciaries. Initiating judicial reform is risky for a regime that seeks to maintain its authority over its populace, including risks to their preferred policy positions and judgments that run contrary to the preferences of the regime. Given these risks, why do authoritarian leaders often relinquish authority to independent courts? This article argues regime leaders will choose to empower at least nominally independent courts in order to resolve information problems that lead to bargaining failures and civil war. This project uses propensity score matching to account for the complex relationship between institutional arrangement and civil war, and finds that states that adopt an independent court reduce their risk of civil war between 54% and 75% when compared to states that are equally likely to have adopted an independent court, but did not. These results suggest that leaders seeking to reduce uncertainty when bargaining with potential oppositions groups have strong incentives to implement independent judiciaries, and improve our understanding of how and why authoritarian leaders choose to delegate authority to independent judicial institutions.
Do non-graded, one-time, short presentations by a panel of professors on foreign policy issues affect voting behavior among students? Did the panel itself contribute to students' understanding of the importance of foreign policy in evaluating candidates? Did presentations lead to changes in students' candidate preferences? And, fi nally, did the event lead to sustained changes in students' preferences? We fi nd that even though issues of foreign policy tend not to be front and center in American elections, when young voters are presented with information about candidate's foreign policy positions, as we did in this study, it does seem to have an impact on which candidate they plan on voting for.
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