Transnational Judicial Networks: Explaining Patterns of Judicial Activism Against Corruption in Europe.

This project starts with the emergence of a new judicial ethos in Europe in the 1990s, manifested in a new willingness to investigate corruption cases against political elites. I show that statutory independence is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a “judicial revolution,” and argue that relative levels of corruption should be excluded from the pool of possible explanations of variations in judicial activism against it. I then explain how prosecuting judges overcame statutory limitations in France, and why German prosecutors were scarcely touched by the shift in professional norms and “repertoires of action” that transformed judicial politics in France and Italy. This paper shows that evidence provided by Swiss judicial officials help explain the puzzle of French prosecutorial activism under conditions of limited independence while simultaneously “unsolving” institutional explanations of German prosecutorial apathy towards political corruption. Judicial networks forged around transnational evidence collection provide a powerful way of understanding how French judges overcame substantial political and hierarchical obstacles, and the German case makes it possible to examine the limits of this mechanism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]