Why are they so different? A comparison of Judicial Independence between Argentina and Uruguay.

Latin America is going through a time of social and political turbulence. The level of trust in institutions is declining in most parts of the region at the same time as risks of autocratic legalism are rising - or have already arisen - in some states. However, while broad concerns have been expressed about Latin American constitutionalism, the situation is not uniform. Some states in Latin America, such as Uruguay, have shown little signs of experiencing the tendencies to distrust, disillusionment and autocracy that have occurred in others. Why do people in Argentina have less trust in judges than in neighbouring countries? How the lack of institutional quality affects people's perception of judges? To answer these questions that motivate this paper, we will analyse the historical evolution of the independence of the judiciary over the years in Argentina and Uruguay. This historical analysis will show that political interference in the judiciary has been a growing practice in Argentina, while not in Uruguay. This will then allow us to find the possible relationship between this phenomenon and current institutional weakness. We will use a qualitative methodology approach looking for the historical path dependence. Then we will compare these findings with the perceptions of people about the institution, collected during a series of focus groups developed in both countries during the first half of 2022 to see how people view them in terms of independence, and how this links to their respective histories. What makes his particular cases of analysis even more interesting for research is the fact that both countries belong to the same region, have the same system of government, the same system of division of powers and share the same language, origin, history and similar institutional design. The aim is to understand how de-facto practices generate other results contrary to the formal norms and how people be affected by these practices. This is relevant to understand the sociological context in which judicial independence may be used by political actors in opposing ways to strengthen or weaken democracy - even in countries with very strong pre-existing historical, linguistic and cultural similarities.