The Politics of Judicial Decision-making in the Developing World

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The behavior of courts and judicial actors that comprise them has been the subject of much inquiry among scholars working on judicial politics in consolidated democracies such as the United States and Western Europe. However, perhaps due in large part to the lack of systematic data on judicial decision-making in the developing world, such interest has not been replicated among scholars studying judicial institutions in these regions. What factors drive judicial behavior and decision-making in new democracies and authoritarian regimes where judicial independence and the separation of powers stand on fragile ground? Do judges in these regimes act as fair arbiters of justice, or do they act as political actors that are motivated to pursue and protect their own interests? Are they susceptible to biases induced by their personal preferences and predispositions, as well as their own ethnoracial identities?

This panel represents a collective effort to generate novel theoretical and empirical insights regarding the nature of judicial institutions in a comparative context. It brings together evidence drawn from novel sources of data on judicial decisions using rigorous research designs from across the developing world, including China, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Hou and Truex employ a matching design on criminal cases from a large province in China to show that ethnic minority defendants are subject to more severe sentences than Han defendants that have committed similar crimes. Choi, Harris, and Shen-Bayh exploit the conditional random assignment of judges in the Kenyan High Courts to criminal cases to examine whether judges demonstrate leniency when rendering sentences to their coethnic appellants. Feierherd and Tuñon draw on a similar research design in Argentina to show that judges factor in political considerations in making information regarding cases available to the public and the media. Drawing on the universe of much politicized election petitions filed to the Kenyan High court, Erlich and Kerr show how judicial decisions on these petitions provide a lens through which to understand electoral integrity.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Ethnic Bias in Criminal Sentencing in China - Rory Truex, Princeton University; Yue Hou, University of Pennsylvania

• Ethnicity and Judicial Decision-making: Evidence from the Kenyan High Courts - Danny Choi, University of Pittsburgh; Fiona Shen-Bayh, College of William and Mary; J. Andrew Harris, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Strategic Transparency: Selective Promotion of Corruption Cases in Argentina - German Feierherd, Universidad de San Andrés; Guadalupe Tuñón, University of California, Berkeley

• Obtaining Electoral Fraud Measures through Court Election Petitions - Aaron S. Erlich, McGill University; Nicholas Kerr, University of Florida

Chair

• Jeffrey Staton Emory University

Discussants

• Jeffrey Staton Emory University

• Nahomi Ichino Emory University