Populism and Backlashes against International Courts

Voeten, Erik

doi:10.1017/s1537592719000975

Cited by 103 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…87. Leeds, Mattes, and Vogel 2009. Voeten 2019 notes that populist leaders often fail to follow through on their attacks on international courts.…”

Section: International Pressurementioning

confidence: 99%

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Hyde¹,

Saunders²

2020

Int Org

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A wave of recent research challenges the role of regime type in international relations. One striking takeaway is that democratic and autocratic leaders can often achieve similar levels of domestic constraint, which in many issue areas results in similar international outcomes—leading many to question traditional views of democracies as distinctive in their international relations. In this review essay, we use recent contributions in the field to build what we call a “malleable constraints” framework, in which all governments have an institutionally defined default level of domestic audience constraint that is generally higher in democracies, but leaders maintain some agency within these institutions and can strategically increase their exposure to or insulation from this constraint. Using this framework, we argue that regime type is still a crucial differentiator in international affairs even if, as recent studies suggest, democratic and autocratic leaders can sometimes be similarly constrained by domestic audiences and thus achieve similar international outcomes. This framework helps reconcile many competing claims in recent scholarship, including the puzzle of why autocracies do not strategically increase domestic audience constraint more often. Just because autocracies can engage audience constraints and democracies can escape them does not mean that they can do so with equal ease, frequency, or risk.

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“…87. Leeds, Mattes, and Vogel 2009. Voeten 2019 notes that populist leaders often fail to follow through on their attacks on international courts.…”

Section: International Pressurementioning

confidence: 99%

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Hyde¹,

Saunders²

2020

Int Org

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“…Theoretical insights from research on the role of domestic courts in international order are especially relevant in the wake of growing backlash against international institutions around the world and specifically against the Liberal International Order (Voeten, 2019). Future research could investigate how domestic courts position themselves with respect to transnational lawmaking and dispute resolution at a time when the legitimacy of international institutions is being called into question by member states and popular movements.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestic courts, transnational law, and international order

Kahraman

Kalyanpur

Newman

2020

European Journal of International Relations

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This article revisits the relationship between law and international order. Building on legal research concerned with transnational law, we argue that domestic courts are endogenous sites of international political change. National courts are constitutive of international order by generating new rules, adjudicating transnational disputes, and bounding state sovereignty. We illustrate the ways in which national courts create new political opportunities by updating three core international relations theory debates. Recognizing the role of domestic courts as global adjudicators enhances our understanding of regime complexity and international forum shopping. By re-interpreting aspects of conventional international law, and engaging in cross-border dialogue, domestic courts challenge our understanding of international diffusion and judicialization. By redefining the boundaries of state authority and sovereignty, national courts create potential for conflict and cooperation. A transnational law perspective illustrates the porous nature between domestic and international spheres, highlighting how domestic courts have become adjudicators for state and non-state actors that operate across mainstream levels of analysis. Our approach calls on scholars to move beyond analyzing national legal systems as mechanisms of compliance to instead consider domestic courts as co-creators of international order.

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“…We demonstrate that this reform was catalyzed by a conflict within the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (hereafter 'Ministry of Labor') and a campaign by government officials to preclude this conflict from triggering and legitimating adjudication by the EFTA Court. These findings suggest that the same politics of resistance to judicial review that have hitherto been treated as a source of backlash (Voeten 2020, Madsen, Cebulak and Weibusch 2018, Abebe and Ginsburg 2019, Blauberger and Martinsen 2020 or to legislative and bureaucratic efforts to evade court decisions (Rosenberg 2008, Conant 2002, Martinsen 2015, Martinsen et al 2019) can also catalyze a politics of preemptive reform indicative of an important -albeit often overlooked -type of judicial impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

The Shadow Effect of Courts: Judicial Review and the Politics of Preemptive Reform

Pavone

Stiansen

2021

Preprint

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Political scientists often presume that courts can only influence policy if they are solicited in a dispute. Conversely, we theorize the shadow effect of courts: Policymakers preemptively altering policies in anticipation of judicial review. Building on American studies tying these preemptive reforms to interest group litigation and political support for judicial review, we elaborate a theory capable of traveling to less litigious and judicialized contexts. We argue that in these settings shadow effects may still emerge when bureaucratic conflicts threaten to trigger adjudication and policymakers resisting judicial interference seek to preclude courts from building caselaw. To illustrate our theory, we trace how a sudden overhaul of welfare policy in Norway -a country with limited judicial review and interest group litigationwas triggered by an administrative conflict and government efforts to avoid interference by an often-overlooked international court. Our findings advance research on judicial impact, resistance to courts, and bureaucratic politics.

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Populism and Backlashes against International Courts

Cited by 103 publications

References 68 publications

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Recapturing Regime Type in International Relations: Leaders, Institutions, and Agency Space

Domestic courts, transnational law, and international order

The Shadow Effect of Courts: Judicial Review and the Politics of Preemptive Reform

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