Can a leopard change its spots? Strategic behavior versus professional role conception during Ukraine's 2014 court chair elections

Bibliographic Data

ID6090223
AuthorsMaria Popova (0000-0001-7351-9442, Department of Political Science, McGill University Quebec Canada, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume42
Issue4
Pages365-381
Publication date2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLaw & Policy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0265-8240 • E-ISSN: 1467-9930
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/lapo.12156
OpenAlexW3091932690
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited22

Do judges respond to institutional and strategic incentives or do they strictly follow dominant professional role conceptions? This article weighs in by exploring whether an ideational shift toward judicial empowerment and independence can germinate from institutional reforms. Ukraine's 2014 Euromaidan revolution and the comprehensive judicial reform adopted in its wake provide a test of the competing theoretical accounts. A judicial lustration law sacked all incumbent court chairs, who had been appointed by the executive, and gave Ukrainian judges the right to elect new chairs via secret ballot. I analyze this radical step toward judicial self‐government using an original data set with individual‐ and court‐level data. The key finding is that less than a fifth of Ukrainian judges embraced their newly granted agency and elected a new chair for their court, whereas the overwhelming majority followed dominant professional norms of deference and reelected the sacked court chairs. This finding holds for all rungs of the judicial hierarchy and for all regions of Ukraine. Even protégés of ousted president Yanukovych won the secret ballot vote by their peers more often than they lost it. Beyond Ukraine, these results suggest that empowering individual judges in the highly hierarchical structure of a civil law judiciary is unlikely to lead to a judicial behavior shift, at least in the short run

Ballot · Economics · Impartiality · Incentive · Judicial activism · Judicial Independence · Judicial reform · Judicial review · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Supreme court · Ukrainian · Voting · European and International Law Studies · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems

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