Collaborative Research: Judicial Legitimacy in Comparative Perspective

世界各地的政治当权者通常会通过立法来削弱政府的司法分支或使其政治化，比如“打包”法院的成员，或削弱法院裁决某些案件的能力。长期以来，政治学家一直认为，公民将在下次选举中惩罚那些提出这些“法院限制”建议的现任者。然而，这些攻击仍在继续。该项目旨在了解选民愿意和能够惩罚破坏高等法院的现任政客的条件，以及政客实际上可能从这些分支间攻击中受益的情况。研究人员将解释12个国家公民对司法机构支持的变化，这是他们对法院决策的满意度，他们的民主价值观，他们对现任者的支持以及他们所生活的政治环境的函数。了解地球仪各地司法合法性的基础和后果，对于在全世界建立和维护法治至关重要。本研究的主要智力贡献是使用了一个原始的调查实验，在世界各地的12个国家，以探讨选举成本和利益的分支机构间的攻击现任政治家。这个实验依赖于一个新的因变量，一个公民愿意撤回对公开寻求破坏法院的现任者的支持，以直接检验合法性理论的行为表现。由于公众的支持是一个理论上的先决条件，愿意惩罚在职者的法院限制的建议，调查将包含验证措施的个人愿意归因于机构的合法性，司法机构，第一次在跨国调查这些项目超过四分之一个世纪。通过这些原始数据，研究人员将测试各国制度合法性基础的差异。本研究的理论框架强调民主价值观的作用，这一概念在现有的司法合法性研究中经常被提及，但尚未得到系统的检验。因此，该项目超越了早期试图理解司法合法性的理论重点，实验设计和纳入研究的数据的广度。这项研究的结果将为政治学家、法律的学者、政策制定者和学者提供信息，以更好地理解司法独立和法治的公共基础，这是各大洲治理的两个基本概念。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Political incumbents around the world commonly introduce legislation to undermine or politicize the judicial branch of government, such as "packing" the court's membership, or reducing the court's ability to decide certain cases. Political scientists have long thought that citizens will punish incumbents who advance these "court curbing" proposals in the next election. Nevertheless, these attacks continue. This project seeks to understand the conditions under which voters are both willing and able punish incumbent politicians who undermine high courts, as well as the circumstances under which politicians may actually benefit from these interbranch assaults. The researchers will explain variation in citizens' support for judicial institutions in 12 countries as a function of their satisfaction with the court's policymaking, their democratic values, their support for incumbents, and the political context in which they live. Understanding the foundations and consequences of judicial legitimacy around the globe is essential for building and maintaining the rule of law worldwide.The key intellectual contribution of this study is the use of an original survey experiment, fielded in 12 countries around the world, to probe the electoral costs and benefits of interbranch attacks for incumbent politicians. The experiment relies on a novel dependent variable, a citizen's willingness to withdraw support from an incumbent who openly seeks to undermine courts, to examine directly a behavioral manifestation of legitimacy theory. Because public support is a theoretical antecedent to a willingness to punish incumbents for court curbing proposals, the surveys will contain validated measures of individuals' willingness to ascribe institutional legitimacy to judicial institutions, the first fielding of these items on cross-national surveys in over a quarter-century. With these original data, the researchers will test differences in the foundations of institutional legitimacy across countries. The theoretical framework for this research emphasizes the role of democratic values, a concept that is often referenced in existing studies of judicial legitimacy but has not been tested in a systematic fashion. This project therefore advances beyond earlier attempts to understand judicial legitimacy in its theoretical focus, experimental design, and the breadth of data incorporated into the study. Findings from this research will inform political scientists, legal scholars, policymakers and academics to better understand the public foundations of judicial independence and the rule of law, two foundational concepts in governance across continents.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.