Managing courts in competitive authoritarian regimes
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14220%2F25%3A00140624" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14220/25:00140624 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12286-024-00621-y.pdf" target="_blank" >https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12286-024-00621-y.pdf</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00621-y" target="_blank" >10.1007/s12286-024-00621-y</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Managing courts in competitive authoritarian regimes
Original language description
More than a decade of democratic backsliding has turned Hungary into a competitive authoritarian state. The government has initiated many judicial reforms to exert control over the judiciary, yet needed to maintain plausible deniability due to formal international and constitutional standards of judicial independence. Based on interviews with Hungarian judges and experts for the judicial system, we explore techniques of managing the courts. In particular we study mechanisms of co-optation and soft repression and explain why the resistance of judges was weak. We find that a complex web of informal patronal politics undermines judicial independence in practice. Moreover, the regime fosters competition between three clients who are entrusted to manage and control the judiciary: the heads of the Supreme Court (Kúria), the National Judicial Office, and the Constitutional Court. Their resources and power ebb and flow with their reliability and performance. We conclude that competitive authoritarian regimes can maintain formally independent judicial institutions by delegating and incentivizing control over the judiciary. They thereby escape measurement, maintain plausible deniability, and evade international pressure.
Czech name
—
Czech description
—
Classification
Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
—
OECD FORD branch
50501 - Law
Result continuities
Project
—
Continuities
S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft
ISSN
1865-2646
e-ISSN
1865-2654
Volume of the periodical
18
Issue of the periodical within the volume
3
Country of publishing house
CH - SWITZERLAND
Number of pages
20
Pages from-to
381-400
UT code for WoS article
001395729600001
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85217222407