The Ideal Judge: How Implicit Bias Shapes Assessment of State Judges

Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) is generally seen as an important part of the merit system, which often suffers from a lack of relevant voter information. Utah’s JPE system has undergone significant change in recent years. Using data from the two most recent JPE surveys, we provide a preliminary look at the operation of this new system. Our results suggest that the survey component has difficulty distinguishing among the judges on the basis of relevant criteria. The question prompts intended to measure performance on different ABA categories are also indistinguishable. We find evidence that, on some measures, female judges do disproportionately worse than male judges. We suggest that the free response comments and the new Court Observation Program results may improve the ability of the commission to make meaningful distinctions among the judges on the basis of appropriate criteria

The Post-Soviet Voter: Evidence From The Caucasus

In western liberal democracies, voting behavior is often times characterized by sociological and psychological indicators. Party identification and issues such as the economy dominant the vote function of the electorate. In the post-Soviet space, party volatility and the competitive authoritarian nature of regimes may result in voters failing to act as agents of accountability. In this dissertation, I argue that the socio-psychological theory of voting behavior applies to post-Soviet electorate in the Caucasus. I demonstrate that Armenian and Georgian voters rely on partisanship as well as perceptions of the economy when casting electoral judgment on the incumbent party. This research furthers the applicability of the socio-psychological theory beyond countries with mature and durable party structures, and demonstrates that voters in competitive authoritarian regimes can act as agents of electoral accountability

Economic Voting in the Developing World

A plethora of ink has been spilled demonstrating the relationship between economics and voter behavior. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of scholarship has concentrated on the empirical assessment of economic voting within the context of developed countries. The present thesis widens the scope of study by testing the applicability of the classic economic voting theory (CEVT) strictly within developing countries. The results suggest that while voters in developing countries do take the economy into account, they do so in a manner that\u27s partially different from what CEVT predicts. Voters in developing countries simultaneously assume both retrospective sociotropic and prospective sociotropic characteristics. Furthermore, economic voting in the developing world takes place within an asymmetrical framework of punishment and reward. The findings suggest that choice theory and its derivative CEVT are ill-equipped at explaining economic voting behavior in developing countries