Judicial Institutions in Authoritarian Regimes and their Implications for Transitional Justice

Abstract

This panel attempts to bring together a number of researchers working on these issues as regards the role of judicial institutions under authoritarian regimes to analyze two closely related issues. The first one is related to the relationship between the autocrat with the judiciary and the coercive apparatus. Goemans (2008) suggests that judicial institutions can be considered as a source of dissent that threatens the power of the dictator. In some other cases, some autocrats manage to contain judicial institutions to threaten their power through strategies of control and political deactivation of courts and its governing institutions, such as monitoring the recruitment system of judges, or the low involvement of judges in political repression (Hilbink, 2007; Mayoral, 2012; Magalhães et al., 2006; Moustafa, 2007, Pereira, 2005; Aguilar, 2013). Hence, we observe how autocrats deal in diverse ways with the configuration of judicial systems (Solomon, 2007). Accordingly, our guiding questions are: Why autocrats deal in diverse ways with the configuration of judicial systems? What motivates state leaders to establish judicial institutions with varying degrees of autonomy? And which are the consequences of adopting different judicial strategies in the general levels of repression and in the survival of the autocracy? The second issue is related to the causal link between the role adopted by the judiciary and the subsequent type of transitional justice. Some researchers have analyzed the transitional justice policies adopted by different countries (Aguilar, 2008, 2012; Barahona de Brito, 1997; Kim and Sikkink, 2010; Olsen, Payne, and Reiter, 2010), but, apart from a few related approaches to the subject (Pereira, 2005; Yusuf, 2010; Aguilar, 2013), there have been no systematic attempts to establish a causal relationship between the type of repressive practices used by dictatorships (clandestine versus official), the extent of the judicial system’s involvement, and subsequent transitional justice policies.