Testing the Logic of Strategic Defection: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court—An Empirical Analysis (1986–2010)

Abstract

It has been argued that, under certain conditions, judges are motivated to engage in strategic defection against their appointer once they perceive the latter to be losing effective power. This behaviour should generate a clustering of decisions unfavourable to the incumbent administration at the end of their term, when they are perceived to be weak. In this article we investigate empirically the application of the strategic defection model on the Philippine Supreme Court in the period 1986–2010. Our results do not seem to strongly corroborate this model. We discuss these empirical results in the context of the Philippines' unstable democracy and general implications for comparative judicial politics.