Date of Award
2022-12-01
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Political Science
Advisor(s)
Rebecca Reid
Abstract
This thesis examines the role of judicial institutions, typically overlooked in conflict studies, in their capacity to reduce the likelihood of conflict such as civil wars. I argue that courts that enjoy judicial independence can provide institutional mechanisms that reduce conflict, such as civil war. Specifically, I employ several rare events logistic and OLS regression models with robust clustered standard errors testing the effects of judicial independence on civil war likelihood and regime opposition size. The results indicate that judicial independence and judicial power have inconsistent and mixed results across these models and generally do not support the theory. In short, there is stronger support for the role of judicial independence for the grievance mechanisms rather than state capacity mechanisms. Nonetheless, this thesis offers a significant contribution by examining an overlooked institutional mechanism through which to reduce the likelihood of civil wars: courts.
Language
en
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
Copyright Date
2022-12
File Size
107 p.
File Format
application/pdf
Rights Holder
Hector R Mendoza
Recommended Citation
Mendoza, Hector R., "Preventing Civil War: The Role of Independent Courts" (2022). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 3703.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/open_etd/3703