Vote buying or (political) business (cycles) as usual?

We study the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies (1975-2009). We find an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months of about one tenth of a standard deviation. A similar effect can neither be detected in established OECD democracies nor in other months. The effect is larger in democracies with many poor and uneducated voters, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and in East-Asia and the Pacific. We argue that the election month monetary expansion is related to systemic vote buying which requires significant amounts of cash to be disbursed right before elections. The finely timed increase in M1 is consistent with this; is inconsistent with a monetary cycle aimed at creating an election time boom; and it cannot be, fully, accounted for by alternative explanations

Communicative entrepreneurs: the case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ dialogue with national judges

Many norms develop in the absence of clear templates for how to implement them. I argue that, even under these conditions, individuals and organizations can still successfully push for new norms, along with attendant changes in state practices. They do so through a mode of action that I term communicative entrepreneurship. Unlike norm entrepreneurs, communicative entrepreneurs do not project normative or technocratic certainty. They use nudges and networking strategies to trigger debates that define the contours of emerging normative scripts. I illustrate this dynamic with the case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which became interested in regulating the use of its jurisprudence by local judges. Lacking a script amenable for diffusion, it triggered a dialogue with national courts to jointly regulate citation practices, and more generally, judges’ obligations with respect to international human rights jurisprudence. Using original interviews and other sources, I trace the impact of communicative entrepreneurship on the behavior of Mexican and Colombian high courts. I show that it led to the development of new judicial decision-making standards in two very different contexts and therefore bolstered the authority of the Inter-American Court

Defending the European court of human rights: Experimental evidence from Britain

As nationalist sentiments gain traction globally, the attitudinal and institutional foundations of the international liberal order face new challenges. One manifestation of this trend is the growing backlash against international courts. Defenders of the liberal order struggle to articulate compelling reasons for why states, and their citizens, should continue delegating authority to international institutions. This article probes the effectiveness of arguments that emphasise the appropriateness and benefits of cooperation in containing preferences for backlash among the mass public. We rely on IR theories that explain why elites create international institutions to derive three sets of arguments that could be deployed to boost support for international courts. We then use experimental methods to test their impact on support for backlash against the European Court of Human Rights in Britain (ECtHR). First, in line with principal‐agent models of delegation, we find that information about the court's reliability as an ‘agent’ boosts support for the ECtHR, but less so information that signals Britain's status as a principal. Second, in line with constructivist approaches, associating support for the court with the position of an in‐group state like Denmark, and opposition with an out‐group state like Russia, also elicits more positive attitudes. This finding points to the importance of ‘blame by association’ and cues of in/out‐group identity in building support for cooperation. The effect is stronger when we increase social pressure by providing information about social attitudes towards Denmark and Russia in Britain, where the public overwhelmingly trusts the Danes and distrusts the Russians. Finally, in contrast to Liberal explanations for the creation of the ECtHR, the study finds no evidence that highlighting the court's mission to promote democracy and international peace contains backlash. We show that the positive effects of the first two arguments are not driven by pre‐treatment attitudes such as political sophistication, patriotism, internationalism, institutional trust or political preferences

Philanthropic foundations and transnational activist networks: Ford and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights

Foundations are a major source of funds for NGOs. We know little about what they do for transnational activism or the mechanisms via which they seek/achieve influence. We carve a middle-ground between those who see donors as supporting actors in transnational advocacy networks (TANs), and those who think they distort activism through impersonal market forces. Our negotiation-oriented approach looks at the micro-dynamics of donor-grantee relations. We argue that influence is a function of donors’ organizational characteristics. Only some, especially foundations, have the vision/means to shape grantees. But internal complexity can cause coordination problems that complicate influence. Additionally, if many donors exist, recipients’ leverage increases. It does so too if their expertise is in short supply. Using archival evidence, we reconstruct how Ford tried to shape the Inter-American Human Rights Institute, a pillar of the region's human rights regime, and the factors conditioning success. For Ford, the Institute could play a key role in a fledging TAN, but only if it downplayed its emphasis on research and directly engaged activists. Coupled with analyses of USAID’s relationship with the Institute and Ford’s relationship with Americas Watch, we shed light on the activities of an important class of donor and illuminate foundations’ role in the development of TANs

Lava jato beyond borders: the uneven performance of anti-corruption judicial efforts in Latin America

This essay uses an original database to trace the regionalization of the Lava Jato case, following revelations by judicial authorities in the United States in December 2016. It also investigates variation in the progress of national investigative efforts. Corruption investigations inevitably target powerful political and business elites. As a result, the permissiveness of the political environment is crucial to explaining why some chapters of Lava Jato have been able to make more progress than others. This essay acknowledges the relevance of such constraints, but also draws attention to the importance of judicial agency. We argue that the quality of anticorruption investigations is not entirely endogenous to the presence of a favorable political environment; certain choices and prosecutorial strategies can effectively expand narrow limits of political possibility, and help build momentum when there is none. More importantly, even when conditions allow for more independent prosecutorial efforts, judicial actors still need to be willing and able to overcome the many technical obstacles that characterize this type of inquiry. Securing high-quality evidence in information-poor environments, building relations with myriad national and international players, and leveraging media cover are all crucial to guaranteeing progress. We analyze the role of judicial agency in the cases of Ecuador and Peru, where investigators managed to secure a number of crucial victories, and in Mexico, where the investigation failed to deliver results. The essay thus contributes to the scholarly literature on the judicialization of grand corruption

Lava jato beyond borders: the uneven performance of anti-corruption judicial efforts in Latin America

This essay uses an original database to trace the regionalization of the Lava Jato case, following revelations by judicial authorities in the United States in December 2016. It also investigates variation in the progress of national investigative efforts. Corruption investigations inevitably target powerful political and business elites. As a result, the permissiveness of the political environment is crucial to explaining why some chapters of Lava Jato have been able to make more progress than others. This essay acknowledges the relevance of such constraints, but also draws attention to the importance of judicial agency. We argue that the quality of anticorruption investigations is not entirely endogenous to the presence of a favorable political environment; certain choices and prosecutorial strategies can effectively expand narrow limits of political possibility, and help build momentum when there is none. More importantly, even when conditions allow for more independent prosecutorial efforts, judicial actors still need to be willing and able to overcome the many technical obstacles that characterize this type of inquiry. Securing high-quality evidence in information-poor environments, building relations with myriad national and international players, and leveraging media cover are all crucial to guaranteeing progress. We analyze the role of judicial agency in the cases of Ecuador and Peru, where investigators managed to secure a number of crucial victories, and in Mexico, where the investigation failed to deliver results. The essay thus contributes to the scholarly literature on the judicialization of grand corruption

Constructing a regional human rights legal order: The Inter-American Court, national courts, and judicial dialogue, 1988–2014

Why do courts rely on specific bodies of jurisprudence to justify decisions? We analyze judicial dialogue in the Inter-American System, where the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has defined its mission as the construction of a regional legal order. This order needs courts at all levels to engage with each other. Original databases of citations by the IACtHR to the judgments of national courts, and in the opposite direction, allow us to establish whether such practices are emerging. Furthermore, the article asks why the IACtHR cites some courts but not others, and to what end. Statistical models reveal that the IACtHR is more likely to cite case law from countries that exhibit characteristics that are more conducive to the creation of a regional human rights legal order, and jurisprudence from countries with which it has had more extensive experience and interaction. Qualitative content analysis suggests that the IACtHR uses citations as a source of persuasive authority, but also to showcase domestic acceptance of its doctrines and decisions. This leads us to characterize citations as an effort to educate courts in the use of Inter-American jurisprudence and thus foster greater integration. At the national level, we find considerable temporal/cross-country variation in openness to the dialogue. We rely on original quantitative indicators and case studies to show this is as a function of the IACtHR’s growing visibility and networking efforts, as well as country-level changes in legal cultures and judicial personnel that push courts away from formalism

Process tracing and the problem of missing data

Scholars who conduct process tracing often face the problem of missing data. The inability to document key steps in their causal chains makes it difficult to validate theoretical models. In this article, we conceptualize “missingness” as it relates to process tracing, describe different scenarios in which it is pervasive, and present three ways of addressing the problem. First, researchers should contextualize the data generation process. This requires characterizing the process whereby the actors that populate models decide whether to leave traces of their actions and motives. Researchers can thus assess whether or not incentives to produce missingness are compatible with the microfoundations of the theory, and consequently, whether or not missingness is disconfirmatory. Second, researchers may invest in indirect tests of causal mechanisms. Generating out-of-context data about microfoundations offers a plausible window into inaccessible mechanisms. Third, specifying the analytical status of steps in the causal chain allows scholars to make up for deficiencies in evidentiary support

Compensation and compliance: Sources of public acceptance of the U.K. Supreme Court's Brexit decision

The perception that a high court's decision is binding and final is a crucial prerequisite for its ability to settle political conflicts. Under what conditions are citizens more likely to accept controversial judicial rulings? Mass acceptance is determined, in part, by how rulings are framed during public debate. This paper takes a broad view of the strategies and actors that influence the discursive environment surrounding judgments, calling attention to hitherto unexamined determinants of mass acceptance. We theorize that third parties can boost acceptance by pledging compliance, and that courts can moderate opposition by compensating losers. We also look at how populist attacks on judiciaries, common in contemporary democracies, affect acceptance. We test these propositions using a survey experiment conducted in the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court's Brexit decision, the most salient judgment handed down by this court to date. The paper moves the literature on courts and public opinion beyond the United States, and presents evidence backing largely untested assumptions at the heart of models of judicial behavior regarding the benefits of crafting rulings with an eye on the preferences of key audiences