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When justice answers to the president: Reexamining the effect of cabinet partisanship on human rights in presidential democracies

Joshua Holzer

To cite this article: Joshua Holzer (2020): When justice answers to the president: Reexamining the effect of cabinet partisanship on human rights in presidential democracies, The Social Science Journal, DOI: 10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.006

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.006

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When justice answers to the president: Reexamining the effect of cabinet partisanship on human rights in presidential democracies Joshua Holzer

Westminster College, Fulton, MO, USA

ABSTRACT Recent research suggests that the administrations of presidents with diverse cabinets are less likely (and less able) to violate human rights. I posit that a more clear image of how (and where) repression occurs can be obtained by looking at the cabinet portfolios that have the greatest capacity to repress, such as the ministry of justice (which typically oversees a state’s justice system and prison apparatus). In this research note, I reexamine the relationship between cabinet partisanship and government respect for human rights by empirically testing the effect that presidential control over the ministry of justice has on human rights violations in presidential democracies. I find that states are more likely to experience greater government respect for human rights when the justice minister is in a different party than the president’s party. I conclude by suggesting that given the expansive power justice ministers have with regards to the administration of justice, perhaps this position is best occupied by an individual whose first loyalties are the law and the rights of citizens, rather than political party and presidential piety.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 1 December 2018 Revised 12 April 2019 Accepted 15 April 2019

KEYWORDS Presidentialism; Human rights; Repression; Democracies

1. Introduction

Many scholars argue that “independent courts constrain states from abusing human rights” (Crabtree & Fariss, 2015, p. 1). Indeed, Hamilton (2009, p. 239)—writing in 1788—argues that “the independence of the judges may be an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society.” Despite efforts by the judiciary, however, the reality is that courts themselves are not typically responsible for the implementation of their decisions. Hamilton (2009, p. 236) concedes this point by noting that “[t]he judiciary… may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” In essence, even in a perfect world where courts are independent and judges are fair and just, a court’s ultimate decision perhaps matters less than the executive arm’s willingness to enforce that court’s decision.

I argue that the judiciary’s reliance on the executive arm for enforcement empowers more nefarious presidents to abuse human rights through their control of the ministry of justice. When a president is denied control of the ministry of justice, however, he or she has a much harder time using that state’s justice system (and/or prison apparatus) to violate citizens’ rights.1 In this research note, I empirically test the effect that presidential control over the administration of justice has on human rights violations by reexamining the relationship between cabinet partisanship and govern- ment respect for human rights in presidential democracies. I find that states are more likely to

CONTACT Joshua Holzer [email protected] 1Human rights issues are complex and can often impinge on other priorities of a president. Even well-meaning presidents may come to see greater value in protecting human rights as a result of a justice minister that is able to offer a contrasting perspective by playing ‘devil’s advocate.’

© 2020 Western Social Science Association

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2019.04.006

experience greater government respect for human rights when the justice minister is in a different party than the president’s party.

2. Theory

While investigating the relationship between presidential elections and repression, Holzer (2018a, p. 1095) noticed that when “a greater percentage of the cabinet is not from the president’s party… states experience a higher average level of government respect for human rights.” Holzer (2018b, p. 1) follows-up by arguing that “when presidents are able (or forced) to cobble together broad-based coalitions to win…their administrations are less likely (and less able) to violate human rights.” Essentially, “ministers of an opposing party who find themselves in cabinet-level positions…effec- tively wield a veto because if their president proposes a new policy (or the continuation of an old policy) that they disagree with, they can make the implementation of said policy much more onerous” Holzer (2018b, p. 2). A shortcoming of Holzer’s argument is that while control of key cabinet-level positions likely contributes to (or helps to prevent) human rights abuse, many cabinet portfolios (e.g. education) are not likely to be very relevant to the protection (or repression) of human rights. Rather than looking at the percentage of the cabinet not from the president’s party, perhaps a more clear image of how (and where) repression occurs can be obtained by looking at the cabinet portfolios that have the greatest capacity to repress, such as the ministry of justice.2

In most presidential systems, the ministry of justice is in charge of the administration of justice. The head of this ministry is typically responsible for organizing the justice system, maintaining the legal system and public order, as well as overseeing the national police and national prison system. It has been said that “the operation of the criminal justice system is situated at a central point of the relationship between the State and the citizens, indeed one could say…that it is the most precise barometer of respect for and the effective observance of the fundamental rights of persons” (Paz y Paz, 2016, p. 30). Unfortunately, however, being at the central point between the State and its citizens also means that the operation of the criminal justice system is exceptionally well-positioned to be a conduit for the State to take advantage of the rights of its citizens. As head of the operation of the criminal justice system, the justice minister is uniquely situated to be either a guardian of rights or an overseer of abuse.3 From the jailers who supervise the daily activities of those locked away to the interrogators charged with obtaining political information from detainees believed to be a threat to the State, the justice minister is the executive that typically oversees those that repress.

Holzer (2018a, p. 1093) himself acknowledges the power of the justice minister by noting that “[i] f a president actively sought to repress human rights, the Ministry of Justice could very well be an excellent vehicle through which to achieve that goal.” However, he points out that “a president denied control over…the Ministry of Justice may find it hard to use that state’s justice system (and/ or prison apparatus) to ratchet up repression” (Holzer, 2018a, p. 1093). The conventional view argues that “cabinets are negotiated between the president and assembly parties” (Schleiter & Morgan-Jones, 2010, p. 1435) and that parties dominant in the assembly will seek “a proportional share” of cabinet positions (Gamson, 1961, p. 377). More recent research, however, notes that presidents often “distribute portfolios non-proportionally” (Amorim Neto & Samuels, 2011, p. 10). According to Freudenreich (2016, p. 80), this is because “the partisan composition of cabinets is largely predetermined by the bargaining and the competition before and during presidential elec- tions.” He asserts that “pre-electoral coalitions…give parties with weak blackmailing power in the law-making process the chance to team up with presidential candidates and thereby secure a share of cabinet posts after the election” (Freudenreich, 2016, pp. 80–81).

For example, after the first round of the 2010 Colombian presidential election, Germán Vargas Lieras of Cambio Radical (CR) came in third place behind Juan Manuel Santos of Partido Social de

2In some states this ‘ministry’ is called a ‘department.’ 3In some states the minister of justice is called the minister for justice, the secretary of justice, or the attorney general.

2 J. HOLZER

Unidad Nacional (Party of U). Prior to the runoff round, Lieras threw his support behind Santos, and after the election, a victorious Santos ended up appointing Lieras as his justice minister. Holzer provides an even more recent example with the 2017 French presidential election. After the first round, “the leader of Mouvement démocrate (MoDem)…was among the first to endorse Macron,” which ultimately “netted him the role of Minister of Justice” after the election (Holzer, 2018a, pp. 1092–1093). In both the case of Columbia and France, the president ended up with a justice minister from a different party. Building upon Holzer’s (2018a, p. 2) previously mentioned idea that “ministers of an opposing party who find themselves in cabinet-level positions…effectively wield a veto because they can make the implementation of…policy much more onerous,” I argue that when the justice minister’s party is different than the president’s party, the adoption (or continua- tion) of repressive policies is likely much more difficult. This leads me to my hypothesis: justice ministers in a different party than the president’s party promote high government respect for human rights.

3. Research design

In order to test my hypothesis, I have estimated three ordered probit models, all of which are based on the model used by Holzer, which similarly estimated government respect for human rights in presidential democracies. Like Holzer, my pool of presidential democracies was drawn from the Democratic Electoral Systems Around the World dataset (Bormann & Golder, 2013). Following Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland’s (2010) democracy versus dictatorship typology, Bormann and Golder’s (2013, p. 13) dataset considers a regime to be ‘democratic’ if “(i) the chief executive is elected, (ii) the legislature is elected, (iii) there is more than one party competing in elections, and (iv) an alternation under identical electoral rules has taken place.” Furthermore, all ‘democracies’ fall into one of three subtypes: parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential. Like Holzer (2018b, p. 7), “my sample includes both pure-presidential and semi-presidential systems.” Also like Holzer (2018b, p. 3), I further limit my investigation to states that “directly elected their presidents in multicandidate, democratic elections.”

For my dependent variable, I follow Holzer in utilizing the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Physical Integrity Rights Index (Cingranelli, Richards, & Clay, 2014). This is an additive index created from four individual indicators (torture, extrajudicial killing, political imprisonment, and disappearance), which ranges from ‘0’ (indicating no respect for any of these four rights) to ‘8’ (indicating full respect for all four rights of these rights). In this research note, I refer to this index as the CIRI scale.4

To test my hypothesis, I have constructed the following independent variable: is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? This variable is based upon the percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable used by Holzer, which in turn was constructed by using the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments directory.5 This directory provides a monthly description of the cabinets for each country with which the United States maintains a diplomatic relationship.6 Using this directory, Holzer (2018a, p. 3) explains that he “looked up who is in each cabinet for each country where data was available during the years 2001–2011” then identified the political party affiliation for each cabinet-member using the following sources: Banks, Muller, and Overstreet (2003, 2005, 2008, 2009), Banks, Muller, Overstreet, and Isacoff (2010, 2011, 2012, Muller, Isacoff, and Lansford (2013), and finally Bértoa (2016).7 Holzer ultimately used this data to calculate his percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable. In order to test my hypothesis, however, I am uninterested in the partisanship of the entire cabinet, but rather, I am focusing on

4Note that the CIRI scale is only available up until 2011, which provides a temporal limitation of this study. 5Available at: http://https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/world-leaders-1/. 6The year 2001 is the first year for which this directory has data, which provides another temporal limitation of this study. 7Note that he only examined years 2001–2011 because, as mentioned, 2001 is the first year that the CIA directory has data, while 2011 is the last year that the CIRI scale has data.

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the partisanship of a single cabinet-member: the justice minister. To construct my is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? variable, I used the raw data Holzer collected to calculate his percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable, and I have created a simple dichotomous variable coded as follows: every country-year where the justice minister is in a different party than the president’s party is coded as ‘1’, while all residual years are coded as ‘0’.8

After demonstrating “that coalitional presidentialism is quite common around the world,” recently “[t]he literature has now moved beyond establishing that presidents govern with coalitions to asking how presidents govern with coalitions” (Chaisty, Cheeseman, & Power, 2018, p. 18).9 “A central theme in this emerging line of research has been the role of non-partisans in government” (Camerlo & Pérez-Liñán, 2015, p. 316). According to Lee (2018b, p. 345), nonpartisans are typically “professionals ideologically aligned with presidents.” In separate study, Lee (2018a, p. 790) again notes that “when allocating cabinet posts,” presidents “tend to appoint nonpartisan loyalists.” As such, when examining how justice ministers affect repression, it seems important to distinguish between those less likely to be aligned with the president (such as justice ministers in a different party than the president’s party) and those more likely to be aligned with the president (such as nonpartisan justice ministers, as well as justice ministers that are in the same party as the president, which are sometimes referred to as ‘copartisans’). To account for this, I have created the following control variable: is the justice minister nonpartisan? In order to construct this variable, I have again utilized the raw data Holzer collected to calculate his percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable in order to create a simple dichotomous measure, which is coded as follows: every country-year where the justice minister is nonpartisan is coded as ‘1’, while all residual years are coded as ‘0’.

All remaining control variables I have included are standard within the human rights literature. For instance, I include Doyle and Elgie’s (2016) quantification of constitutional limits to presidential power as my measure of executive constraint.10 Next, (logged) measures of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and population size, both of which are from the World Bank (2015). Additionally, I have included a measure of domestic conflict, which is drawn from Version 4-2014a of the UCDP/ PRIO Armed Conflict database (Pettersson & Wallensteen, 2015). This variable is coded as ‘2’ for each country-year where there were more than 999 battle-related deaths, ‘1’ for each country-year where there were between 25 and 999 battle-related deaths, and finally ‘0’ for each country-year with less than 25 battle-related deaths. Finally, to account for patterns of abuse that tend to persist over time, I follow others (e.g., Hafner-Burton, 2005; Holzer, 2018a, 2018b) in addressing autocorrelation by including a series of binary variables for each category of the lagged dependent variable.

4. Results

In Table 1, I present the results of three ordered probit regressions that estimate government respect for human rights in presidential democracies. Recall that my hypothesis is that justice ministers in a different party than the president’s party promote high government respect for human rights. Consistent with this hypothesis, Model 1 reports that my primary independent variable—is the justice minister’s party different

8Note that in order for Holzer to calculate his percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable, he needed to ascertain the political affiliation of every member in any given cabinet for every given year. Being unable to determine the political affiliation of even a single member of the cabinet results in that country-year having no percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party value, thereby resulting in missing data as a result of listwise deletion. In contrast, it is relatively more manageable to ascertain the political affiliation of only two individuals (i.e. the president and his or her justice minister). As a result, my is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? variable has 430 observations from 46 countries in comparison to Holzer’s percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable, which only has 241 observations from 35 countries.

9Emphasis in original. 10Note that I have reversed their original ‘0’ to ‘1’ scale such that higher values now indicate greater presidential constraints (as opposed to greater presidential power).

4 J. HOLZER

than the president’s party?—is positively associated with high government respect for human rights, and that this relationship is statistically significant at the 99% level. Continuing with Model 1, I would like point out that this regression is an overt replication of Holzer (2018b), with the difference being that instead of investigating the association between the partisanship of the entire cabinet and government respect for human rights, I focus only on the partisanship on a single cabinet minister (i.e. the justice minister). Note that despite this change of focus, the results reported in Model 1 nearly mirror Holzer’s results. With Model 2, I demonstrate that even when controlling for Holzer’s percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable, my is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? variable is still positively associated with high government respect for human rights (at least at the 95% level). Finally, for Model 3, I re-run Model 1 with a dataset that has been expanded by 189 observations (i.e. a 78% increase), and notably, the results hold.11

Note that all control variables are statistically significant (at least at the 90% level). For instance, executive constraint and (logged) GDP per capita are found to be positively associated with high

Table 1. Ordered probit estimates of government respect for human rights in presidential democracies, 2001–2011.

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Is the justice minister's party different than the president’s party? (1 = yes, 0 = no) 0.436*** 0.313** 0.458*** (0.138) (0.158) (0.142)

Is the justice minister nonpartisan? (1 = yes, 0 = no) 0.421** 0.316* 0.260** (0.199) (0.185) (0.132)

Percentage of the cabinet not from the president's party 0.289 (0.298)

Executive constraint 0.639 0.576 0.666* (0.487) (0.493) (0.383)

(Logged) GDP per capita 0.261*** 0.237*** 0.328*** (0.082) (0.091) (0.067)

(Logged) population size −0.201** −0.194** −0.212*** (0.078) (0.079) (0.053)

Domestic conflict −1.243*** −1.252*** −0.926*** (0.361) (0.360) (0.232)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 1 −7.045*** −7.070*** −6.924*** (0.797) (0.768) (0.530)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 2 −6.576*** −6.602*** −5.718*** (0.818) (0.816) (0.663)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 3 −5.404*** −5.395*** −4.793*** (0.630) (0.637) (0.541)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 4 −5.001*** −5.008*** −4.203*** (0.650) (0.646) (0.547)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 5 −3.376*** −3.351*** −3.077*** (0.563) (0.566) (0.447)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 6 −2.083*** −2.071*** −1.992*** (0.509) (0.510) (0.397)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 7 −1.783*** −1.776*** −1.690*** (0.402) (0.401) (0.367)

Previous year’s score on the CIRI scale = 8 −0.643* −0.641 −0.840*** (0.388) (0.392) (0.268)

Countries 35 35 46 Observations 241 241 430

Figures in parentheses are robust standard errors clustered by country. Note that the dependent variable is the CIRI scale. Scores on the CIRI scale range from 0 to 8; higher values indicate greater government respect for human rights.

*p < 0.10. **p < 0.05. ***p < 0.01.

11As mentioned above (in footnote 8), this 78% increase is a function of the relative ease to ascertain the political affiliation of only two individuals (i.e. the president and his or her justice minister) versus an entire cabinet (which is required in order to calculate the percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable). Whereas available data was only able to produce 241 observations from 35 countries for Holzer’s percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable, that same raw data was able to produce 430 observations from 46 countries for my is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? variable.

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government respect for human rights, while (logged) population size and domestic conflict are both found to be negatively associated with high government respect for human rights. Notably, my is the justice minister nonpartisan? variable is found to be positively associated with high government respect for human rights, which runs contrary to Lee (2018a, 2018b), who suggests that nonpartisans are likely to be loyal to the president (and therefore unlikely to be more willing to protect human rights than the president). However, these results are consistent Holzer (2018a: 1095), who finds that when “a greater percentage of the cabinet is not from the president’s party…states experience a higher average level of government respect for human rights.” Note that Holzer (2018a) groups both nonpartisan justice ministers and justice ministers in a party different than the president’s party together when evaluating how cabinet partisanship affects government respect for human rights.12

While identifying statistically significant regression coefficients are helpful on a superficial level, a more intuitive understanding of the substantive effects of these relationships can better be communicated through an analysis of predicted probabilities. In Table 2, I outline the parameters of three scenarios which I use to form the basis of my predicted probabilities analysis. The ‘Best’ and ‘Worst’ scenarios are based on the 5th and 95th percentiles of the control variables, while the ‘Average’ scenario is based on each variable’s mean. Essentially, the ‘Best’ scenario represents a rich, less populous state that has a highly constrained presidency, a history of high government respect for human rights, and no domestic conflict. The ‘Worst’ scenario represents a poor, highly populous state that has a powerful and relatively unconstrained presidency, a history of low government respect for human rights, and is experiencing some low-level domestic conflict. Finally, the ‘Average’ scenario represents a state whose statistics are between the ‘Best’ and ‘Worst’ scenarios.

In Table 3, I present the predicted probabilities (with 95% confidence intervals) of changes in government respect for human rights based upon changes in my is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? variable and changes in my is the justice minister nonpartisan? variable.13 These probabilities were estimated using the Clarify software package (Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2003) and help to provide substantive meaning to Model 3 (reported in Table 1). Starting with the ‘Best’ scenario, you can see that the probability of an ‘8’ on the CIRI scale (i.e. the highest possible score for government respect for human rights) is 0.669 when the justice minister’s party is different than the president’s party. Note that this baseline probability changes by −0.171 when the justice minister’s party is the same as the president’s party; this represents a 26% decrease that is statistically significant at the 95% level given that the corresponding 95% confidence interval (which is in brackets) does not overlap with zero. Substantively, this means that in any given year, for a state

Table 2. Summary statistics of scenarios used in predicted probabilities analysis.

'Best' scenario 'Average' scenario 'Worst' scenario

Executive constrainta 0.908 0.665 0.356 Domestic conflictb 0 0 1 GDP per capita $38,500 $8,917 $1,313 Population size 1,116,490 10,409,090 143,321,369 Previous year's score on the CIRI scalec 8 5 1

aScores range from 0 to 1; higher values indicate greater constraints on the power of the president. bScores range from 0 to 2; higher values indicate more domestic conflict. cScores range from 0 to 8; higher values indicate greater government respect for human rights.

12To further investigate this disagreement within the literature, I have performed a robustness check where I have constrained the coefficients of my is the justice minister’s party different than the president’s party? and is the justice minister nonpartisan? variables to equality and have used a nested F-test to discern any reduction in fit (Baum, 2006, p. 92). The associated p-values, however, were well above 0.1, which suggests that the coefficients for these two variables (reported in Table 1) do not statistically differ. In other words, nonpartisan justice ministers and justice ministers in a party different than the president’s party do not seem to have a statistically different effect on government respect for human rights, at least at the 90% (or better) level, suggesting that Holzer (2018a) is justified when aggregating these two groups for his percent of the cabinet not from the president’s party variable.

13Note that country-years where both of these variables are equal to ‘1’ implies that for that country-year the justice minister is in the same party as the president (i.e. they are a copartisan).

6 J. HOLZER

that matches the ‘Best’ case parameters, that state is 26% less likely to be at the highest level of government respect for human rights when the justice minister’s party is the same as the president’s party versus in a different party than the president’s party.14

Continuing with the ‘Best’ scenario, you can see that lower scores on the CIRI scale (i.e. scores of ‘5’ through ‘7’) all correspond with positive percent changes when the justice minister is in the same

Table 3. The percentage change in predicted probabilities of CIRI scores based on the partisahip of the justice minister.

'Best' scenario

CIRI scale

5 6 7 8

Baseline probability when the justice minister's party

0.001 0.012 0.318 0.669

…is different than the president's party

[0.000, 0.003] [0.001, 0.043] [0.159, 0.499] [0.468, 0.838]

Change in baseline probability when the justice minister's…

0.002 0.021 0.148 −0.171

…party is the same as the president's party

[0.000, 0.010] [0.002, 0.066] [0.057, 0.240] [−0.278, −0.065]

Percentage change 337% 180% 46% −26% Change in baseline probability when the justice minister…

0.001 0.007 0.065 −0.072

…is nonpartisan [−0.000, 0.003] [−0.002, 0.027] [−0.024, 0.156] [−0.174, 0.026] Percentage change Not significant Not significant Not significant Not significant

'Average' scenario

CIRI scale

4 5 6 7

Baseline probability when the justice minister's party

0.069 0.294 0.388 0.235

…is different than the president's party

[0.030, 0.126] [0.192, 0.403] [0.315, 0.458] [0.118, 0.379]

Change in baseline probability when the justice minister's…

0.071 0.091 −0.060 −0.113

…party is the same as the president's party

[0.026, 0.124] [0.030, 0.161] [−0.118, −0.010] [−0.205, −0.037]

Percentage change 102% 31% −15% −48% Change in baseline probability when the justice minister…

0.026 0.043 −0.019 −0.054

…is nonpartisan [−0.010, 0.067] [−0.016, 0.107] [−0.063, 0.011] [−0.137, 0.019] Percentage change Not significant Not significant Not significant Not significant

'Worst' scenario

CIRI scale

0 1 2 3

Baseline probability when the justice minister's party

0.410 0.461 0.117 0.012

…is different than the president's party

[0.184, 0.663] [0.270, 0.636] [0.025, 0.274] [0.000, 0.054]

Change in baseline probability when the justice minister's…

0.172 −0.104 −0.060 −0.007

…party is the same as the president's party

[0.067, 0.277] [−0.212, −0.009] [−0.134, −0.014] [−0.030, −0.000]

Percentage change 42% −23% −51% −62% Change in baseline probability when the justice minister…

0.074 −0.042 −0.029 −0.003

…is nonpartisan [−0.027, 0.178] [−0.128, 0.014] [−0.083, 0.012] [−0.017, 0.002] Percentage change Not significant Not significant Not significant Not significant

95% confidence intervals are in brackets. Note that scores on the CIRI scale range from 0 to 8; higher values indicate greater government respect for human rights.

14In Table 3 I also report the change in baseline probability when the justice minister is nonpartisan (versus in a different party than the president’s party). However, note that the 95% confidence for all of these changes (across all three scenarios) overlap with zero. This suggest that these positive/negative changes are not statistically different than no change at all (i.e. zero). As mentioned above (in footnote 12), this suggests that although Lee (2018a, 2018b) argues that nonpartisan ministers are typically more loyal than ministers within the president’s own party (i.e. copartisans), nonpartisans are perhaps less loyal than copartisans with regards to policies related to government respect for human rights.

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party as the president. Substantively, this means that in any given year, for a state that matches the ‘Best’ case parameters, that state is more likely to be at these lower levels of government respect for human rights when the justice minister’s party is the same as the president’s party versus different than the president’s party. Looking now to the ‘Average’ and ‘Worst’ scenarios, you can see that for both, relatively lower scores on the CIRI scale again correspond with positive percent changes, while relatively higher scores on the CIRI scale correspond with negative percent changes. In short, this suggests that states are more likely to experience greater government respect for human rights when the justice minister is in a different party than the president’s party.

5. Conclusion

In this research note, I have reexamined the relationship between cabinet partisanship and government respect for human rights, and I find that states are more likely to experience greater government respect for human rights when the justice minister is in a different party than the president’s party. I argue that when presidents appoint justice ministers from within their own political party, those justice ministers are less likely to disagree with any of the president’s ambitions to repress (in comparison to justice ministers that are members of a different party than the president’s party). In such circumstances, a president has a freer hand to infringe upon the rights of citizens. Although courts may try to push back, if the enforcer of court opinions (i.e. the justice minister) is a loyal partisan that answers first to the president, then the admin- istration of justice may be supplanted with the selective administration of injustices.15

Speaking at the 1906 annual convention of the American Bar Association, Pound (1964, p. 355) argues that “[d]issatisfaction with the administration of justice is as old as the law.” In this research note, I have sought to shed light on why the administration of justice produces dissatisfaction. While “recent research suggests a strong positive correlation between judicial independence and state government respect for human rights,” Crabtree and Fariss (2015, p. 1) note that “the empirical evidence presented in these studies is mixed.” I propose that perhaps these mixed results are due to court opinions that are not being fully and effectively implemented. Spriggs (1996, p. 1122), for instance, notes that “[g]overnment bureaucracies are strategic and implement…[c]ourt opinions based upon the costs and benefits of alternative policy choices.” I argue that in addition to focusing on whether a court arrived at its decision ‘independent’ of outside influence, we should be looking at whether the executor of that court decision is ‘independent’ of undue influence. Given the expansive power that justice ministers have with regards to the administration of justice, perhaps this position is best occupied by an individual whose first loyalties are the law and the rights of citizens, rather than political party and presidential piety.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this research note was presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association-Midwest in Saint Louis, Missouri. I would like the thank several anonymous reviewers whose comments have greatly improved this manuscript. Additionally, I would like to thank Sera Chiuchiarelli for all of her steadfast support. Any remaining errors are my own.

ORCID

Joshua Holzer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3024-3703

15Alternatively, rather than a president using his or her copartisan justice minister to repress citizens’ rights, repressive justice ministers may find themselves less constrained by a copartisan president and/or more constrained by a president of a different party. Either way, this research note warns of the human rights repercussions when one party controls both the presidency and the ministry of justice.

8 J. HOLZER

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