Legislative Coalitions and Judicial Turnover under Political Uncertainty

The Case of Ecuador

Bibliographic Data

ID6340802
AuthorsSantiago Basabe-Serrano (0000-0002-8615-6908, FLACSO, Quito, Ecuador), J Polga-Hecimovich (0000-0002-0711-6255, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Year2013
Volume66
Issue1
Pages154-166
Publication date2013-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Research Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1065-9129 • E-ISSN: 1938-274X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1065912911436319
OpenAlexW2068582979
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited36

While judicial turnover in Latin American high courts is often the result of political realignments within the executive branch, the judiciary may also be sensitive to realignments in the legislative branch. The authors use data from the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to show that under some circumstances, congressional deputies will seek to remove judges further from their own ideal points as the composition of the legislative coalition changes. This provides some of the first empirical evidence of the role legislatures play in Latin American judicial instability and may be broadly generalizable to other countries with similar institutional profiles and rates of interbranch crisis

Chamber of Deputies · Economics · Executive branch · Judicial review · Latin Americans · Law and economics · Legislature · Political science · Politics · Separation of powers · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems · Legal and Constitutional Studies · Public Administration