The literature on authoritarian regimes has shown that institutions are more than window dressing, and that institutional choice in such regimes determine the mix of repression and cooptation. This literature has focused mainly on elections, political parties, and legislatures. But the questions why do autocrats create and maintain independent judicial institutions, and whether they make any difference, have largely remain unaddressed. We show that whereas independent judicial institutions in autocracies are created to serve the interests of those in power, they are also double-edged swords that affect the decision on whether to coopt or repress and thus produce unforeseen and undesirable consequences for the ruling coalition. In a nutshell, judicial institutions participate in monitoring and coordination functions in authoritarian regimes, but the nature of their work implies the protection of rights and the establishment of rules that influence the exercise of power and the fate of those regimes.
