How to Sell a Coup: Elections as Coup Legitimation (with Sharan Grewal) (Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2019)
Unlike other political leaders, leaders coming to power through military coups face a dual legitimation challenge: they must justify not only why they should rule, but also how they came to power. Little attention has been paid to how coup leaders solve this legitimacy deficit, and even less to the audiences of this legitimation. We ask: why do some coup leaders legitimate their coups by holding elections while others do not? Counterintuitively, we argue that coup leaders who oust democratically-elected leaders are less likely to hold elections, except when tied to U.S. military aid. We test these hypotheses through a dataset of military coup regimes from 1946-2014, and trace out mechanisms through case studies of the Nigerian coup of 1983 and the Egyptian coup of 2013. This argument provides a new explanation for the emergence of authoritarian elections and a new perspective on the international dimensions of dictatorship.
When Judges defy Dictators: An Audience-Based Framework to Explain the Emergence of Judicial Assertiveness against Authoritarian regimes (Comparative Politics, 2021)
Under what conditions do judiciaries act assertively against authoritarian regimes? I argue that the judiciary coalesces around institutional norms and preferences in response to the preferences of institutions and networks, or “audiences,” with which judges interact, and which shape the careers and reputations of judges. Proposing a typology of judicial-regime relations, I demonstrate that the judiciary’s affinity to authoritarian regimes diminishes as these audiences grow independent from the regime. Using case law research, archival research and interviews, I demonstrate the utility of the audience-based framework for explaining judicial behavior in authoritarian regimes by exploring cross-temporal variation across authoritarian regimes in Pakistan. This study integrates ideas-based and interest-based explanations for judicial behavior in a generalizable framework for explaining variation in judicial assertiveness against. authoritarian regimes.
Selective Assertiveness and Strategic Deference: Explaining Judicial Contestation of Military Prerogatives (Democratization, 2021)
Can judiciaries bring politically powerful militaries under civilian control? A core dilemma in state-building is the tension between building a strong, efficacious military, and ensuring the military remains under civilian control. This article seeks to understand the role the judiciary can play in building civilian control over the military. I argue, that in states with politically powerful militaries, the judiciary’s willingness to assert itself is contingent upon the type of military prerogative being challenged. The judiciary’s assertiveness varies based on the extent to which the military prerogative being challenged is connected to the military’s maintenance of its institutional autonomy or its political authority. On questions pertaining to the military’s institutional autonomy, strategic concerns about military retaliation will trump judicial preferences for civilian control over the military. I test my hypothesis of selective assertiveness using an original dataset of 723 Pakistani high court decisions pertaining to military prerogatives from 1973 to 2015. I then use information gleaned from case law research, archival newspaper research and interviews with lawyers and judges to discuss a series of salient judgments that demonstrate that the judiciary’s selective assertiveness is guided primarily by strategic concerns about the likelihood of military retaliation against the judiciary.
Mechanisms of Democratic Authoritarianism: De-Centring the Executive in South Asia and Beyond (Democratization 2022)
How do we theorize the unexpected global trend of democratic regression? Building upon recent literature on backsliding, we offer a new conceptualization of the notion of democratic authoritarianism, denoting the use of democratic-looking institutions for the expansion of authoritarian forms of power across different regime types, democratic and authoritarian. Whereas existing accounts of autocratization focus overwhelmingly on the executive, we outline democratic authoritarianism as a broader process involving mechanisms of institutional and ideational capture, which may be initiated and implemented by executives, legislatures, judiciaries as well as non-state organizations, often acting in tandem. Our notion of democratic authoritarianism can explain autocratization in states with both strong and weak elected executives; it recognizes the role of anti-pluralist ideologies and civil society organizations in enabling autocratization. We illustrate our argument through a comparative analysis of contemporary South Asia, which we argue illustrates different variants of democratic authoritarianism. Through detailed case studies of India and Pakistan since 2014, we show that South Asia is significant for understandings of autocratization, notably, the range of instruments deployed and the different stages of democratic authoritarianism, the interplay between state and societal institutions, and the limits of commonly suggested remedies, notably empowering the judiciary and civil society.
The Politics of Policing in Pakistan: Decentralisation of Power in a Federalised Political Landscape (with Zoha Waseem) (Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 2024).
How do political parties establish partisan control over police forces in federalised hybrid regimes with powerful militaries? Focusing on Pakistan, this paper examines how, in the context of limited and ambiguous administrative decentralisation after the 18th Amendment to the constitution, and continued military embeddedness in state bureaucracies, parties have sought to control provincial police forces. Focusing on clashes over appointments in the leadership of provincial police forces, we argue that: firstly, turnover in the leadership of provincial police forces is more likely under new governments than under incumbent governments; and, secondly, provincial police leadership is more likely to pushback against partisan control when the hybrid political system is vertically fragmented, i.e, when the provincial political leadership and the federal military leadership are not aligned. We analyse the politics of policing in two provinces, Sindh and Punjab, since 2017. This comparative analysis contributes to debates on the politics of policing in hybrid federations.
The People’s Court: Dissonant Institutionalization and Judicial Populism in Pakistan (Law and Social Inquiry, 2024).
What is a populist judge, and when do judges embrace populism? Populist judges bypass legal and procedural constraints, seek an unmediated relationship with the public, and claim to represent the public better than political elites. Judicial populism can emerge in response to institutionalized dissonance in the political system. Dissonant institutionalization facilitates contestation between state institutions and can undermine the legitimacy of political institutions. This legitimacy crisis can imbue judges with a belief in their role as representatives of the public interest. In Pakistan, the dissonance caused by unresolved differences between the civil-military bureaucracy and the elected political leadership— differences that were embedded into the constitutional framework, facilitated the rise of judicial populism. I outline the key features of judicial populism and study the dynamics surrounding the rapid expansion of populist jurisprudence between 2005 and 2019 in Pakistan, with a focus on public interest litigation that became the cornerstone of the judiciary’s populist turn. Through case analysis, archival research, and semi-structured interviews, I discuss features of the populist approach to jurisprudence and trace how dissonance within Pakistan’s political system created new opportunities for the judiciary and changed judicial role conceptions within the legal and judicial community.
Understanding Judicial Populism (with Lisa Hilbink), Forthcoming in Law and Social Inquiry, 2025.
Scholars and policymakers are grappling with the challenge of understanding the rise of populism and the threat it poses to constitutional democracy. Current scholarship typically conceives of courts as the victims or targets of populist politics. Indeed, these scholars prescribe the strengthening of courts as an antidote for populist efforts to centralize power and unravel stable constitutional arrangements. But what if judges actually pursue the populist path themselves and claim to speak for the people? Judges in states as diverse as Brazil, India, Italy and Pakistan have, at different times, adopted a populist vocabulary, claiming to represent popular sentiments, and critiquing the shortcomings of the political elite, as they expand their jurisdiction over the executive and legislature, and engage with political questions that define and divide entire polities. In this introduction to our symposium issue, we seek to understand this phenomenon of judicial populism, and consider the consequences these judiciaries have for democracy and the rule of law in regions around the world.