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.
Understanding Judicial Populism (with Lisa Hilbink) Working Paper, In Preparation for Special Edition, 2020.
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 special edition, we seek to understand this phenomenon of judicial populism, explore the conditions under which populist judges emerge, and consider the consequences these judiciaries have for democracy and the rule of law in regions around the world