Biting the Feeding Hand: Examining Judicial Defection in Hybrid Regimes.

When do judges defer and when do they defy? This paper examines the conditions under which individual judges overrule their appointers under conditions of increasing authoritarianism. While studies of judicial decision-making under job insecurity, dictatorship, and transition conditions have been undertaken (Helmke 2002; Moustafa 2007; Herron and Randazzo 2003), there is a need to investigate judicial behavior in hybrid regimes. In this type of political settings, when do courts bless, and when do they bite? The paper develops a theoretical framework to explain the behavior of judges in cases involving the government in hybrid regimes. Those theoretical contentions are then tested, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in the case of the Philippines. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]