Judicial Independence in Unstable Environments, Argentina 1935-1998

Abstract

Argentina's constitution and electoral rules promote a fragmented polity. It is in those environments that inde- pendent judiciaries develop. Instead, most analysts do not consider the Argentina judiciary as independent. In this article we attempt to explain this contradiction by showing that this perception is inappropriate. We de- velop a test of the hypothesis that the judiciary is independent by empiri- cally examining the political incen- tives faced by individual justices in their decision making. Our results show an often-defiant Court subject to constraints. Our measure of defi- ance is the probability of a non- aligned justice voting against the government. We find that judicial decision making was strategic. The probability of voting against the gov- ernment falls the stronger the control of the president over the legislature, but increases the less aligned the justice is with the President. Thus,