Agenda Control and Coalition Bargaining in the European Court of Human Rights

A central issue in theories of judicial politics concerns the organization of intracourt bargaining. Some scholars argue that the median judge exercises the most influence over court policy, while others focus on the median judge of the majority coalition, and others yet on the majority opinion writer. By contrast, we argue that judicial decision-making often occurs in the shadow of hierarchy. Collegial courts typically feature one or more ``chief justices'' who may have both incentive and opportunity to impose their own preferences on the other judges through formal authority. To buttress this conjecture, we examine data concerning all judges and judgments of the European Court of Human Rights between 1959 and 2016. Using a within-judge research design, we show that judges build and maintain larger coalitions in support of their preferred outcomes when they act as presidents than when they are part of the court's rank-and-file. In addition to shedding new light on the internal operations of one of the world's most prolific international courts, our findings have broad implications for theories of judicial decision making.