Date of Award

5-10-2026

Date Published

June 2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science

Advisor(s)

Thomas Keck

Keywords

democratic backsliding;high courts;judicial independence;judicial politics;political insurance

Subject Categories

Political Science | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

This dissertation is a collection of three papers that explore the roles that high courts play during democratic decline and the incentives and conditions that explain them. Each uses a different methodological approach to address this central question. Paper 1. “The Political Foundations of Independent Judicial Review Revisited: Modeling Political Insurance” Episodes of democratic decline routinely feature reductions in judicial independence. Which mechanisms connect these phenomena? I model political insurance theory to explore how the internal workings of a foundational theory may help explain the nature of judicial independence during threats to democracy. I find that political competition must be sufficiently high, the cost of judicial review for the incumbent must be sufficiently low, and the opposition’s payoffs must be sufficiently high for judicial review to be a sustainable equilibrium. I then suggest three plausible mechanisms that link democratic decline with judicial independence. First, lower competition due to democratic decline can lower the incentive to respect judicial review. Second, the ideological actors behind autocratization often hold ideologies that make the cost of tolerating judicial independence higher for incumbents. Finally, the context of democratic decline may lower the opposition’s benefit from judicial review. Paper 2. “Ideology and judicial independence: Who undermines high courts in democracies?” This mixed-methods study explores the role of political ideology in sustaining judicial independence in democracies, focusing on populism. First, I model judicial independence cross-nationally from 1975 to 2014 and find that populist views, measured as anti-pluralist and anti-elite views, among legislative and executive incumbents correlate with lower levels of judicial independence. Second, I find congruent evidence in a within-case study of Poland from 2005 to 2024. These analyses are consistent with an increasingly common but under verified proposition, that populist incumbents oppose high court independence globally, and suggest that ideology influences politicians’ strategic evaluations of high courts. Paper 3. “Constitutional Justice during Democratic Decline: High Courts as Bulwarks, Facilita- tors, or Externalities?” What role do high courts play in democratic decline? This article explores how often high courts act as active facilitators of democratic decline, how often they lose their independence from other branches after regime change, and how often they maintain their independence despite threats to democracy. Using a novel measurement approach, I measure changes in constitutional justice during episodes of democratic decline that began in democracies from 1945 to 2024 (N=62). I examine the face validity and usefulness of the measure through three country cases and interpret the findings in light of competing theories on the relationship between democratic decline and constitutional justice. Importantly, I find that high courts’ roles differ depending on whether democratic decline began under a political system with strong liberal institutions and practices versus one without. I then suggest further study into the scope conditions of existing theories.

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