This paper proposes an empirical strategy for the study of informal ways of political interference with the judiciary in new democracies, and illustrates it with preliminary evidence from three francophone African (Benin, Madagascar and Senegal) and three Latin American (Argentina, Paraguay and Chile) countries. Theoretically, it builds on a line of research suggesting that a way to operationalize the complex concept of judicial independence is to think about potential empirical indicators of pressure by the elected branches. According to these works, the elected branches respond to certain rulings by the courts either with actions based on the legal provisions that regulate their relations with the judges, or they adopt extra-legal and retaliatory actions, which are also referred to as informal ways of exercising pressure. In this paper, we concentrate on the informal mechanisms of political pressure, which have been relatively less systematized for comparative purposes than formal factors. Drawing from the existing literature, we developed a questionnaire that was used to conduct semi-structured interviews in the aforementioned new democracies, including judicial experts (NGOs, journalists, academics), former and current constitutional judges, and politicians. This paper offers a systematization of the ways of undue political inference that are being used in these countries according to our interviews, and searches for explanations of the different behaviors evinced by the elected branches vis-à-vis the judiciary after democratization.
