When do the politicians “attack” the courts? Evidence from a Large-Scale Comparative Analysis

With the rise of populism, we have started to encounter numerous examples of government attacks on democratic institutions including the judiciary. Focusing on the government attacks on the judiciary, this study has two objectives. First, it aims to delineate the key political, institutional and social factors that significantly increases the government attacks on the judiciary. Second, differentiating between the mechanisms of government attacks on judiciary (judicial purges, verbal attacks and court-packing) it aims to show whether there is difference in the contextual factors that lead to the use of each mechanism. In this regard, I hypothesize that, while in democratic regimes politicians tend to use verbal attacks against the judiciary in the context of hybrid regimes court-packing and judicial purges are more frequently used. Using the Using the V-Dem data on judicial purges, verbal attacks on judiciary and court-packing a time-series cross-section analysis across 146 countries for the years 1975-2019 will be conducted.