Emergence of Judicial Power in Hybrid African Democracies.

Why do some hybrid regimes tolerate a strong judiciary and others do not? In order to answer this question we need to unpack our assumptions about government-judicial relations and we must examine the ways in which judicial power is constructed and perceived. Based on in-depth research across three hybrid African regimes - Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda - this paper explores the paradoxical emergence of vibrant judiciaries in constrained political settings. The findings suggest that strategic explanations of judicial power have limited explanatory value in the African context. Instead divergent levels of judicial viability and institutional legitimacy appear to account for the presence of strong judicial power in weak democracies. A judiciary with high levels of institutional viability is able to withstand the frequent exogenous shocks typically present in sub-Saharan Africa’s neopatrimonial regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]