UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines how judicial institutions in sub-Saharan Africa were used to both legitimize repression and maintain autocratic survival during the postcolonial period, as well as the enduring legacies of these tactics on post-autocratic rule of law. When autocrats turn to courts, these moves are often heralded as signs of democratic opening. However, courts can also become forums of repression, where political rivals are criminally prosecuted for anti-regime behavior. Despite these trends, courts remain relatively understudied in repression research. In fact, conventional definitions of repression are almost exclusively extrajudicial, defined as the arbitrary use of coercive violence to threaten or intimidate its target. While a separate scholarship on authoritarian judiciaries draws attention to the autocratic functions of law and order, these findings tend to be disconnected from research on repression. This has limited theory-building on how and why courts are used to contain democratic dissent.

To analyze the politicization of courts in comparative and historical perspective, I develop a theoretical framework that extends beyond conventional notions of judicial independence, re-conceptualizing judicial power along the following three dimensions: jurisdiction, function, and compliance. Jurisdiction refers to the scope of judicial decision-making, or whether judges are allowed to decide cases of political import. Once jurisdiction is granted, function refers to the actual tasks judges are required to perform in service of the regime. For example, one critical function of courts under autocratic rule is to provide a forum for the government to formally prosecute political rivals. Finally, compliance describes whether judges ultimately obey regime objectives, in this case, by convicting rivals for crimes against the state. Evaluated jointly, these three dimensions of judicial power help explain why judges become major political players in some autocratic contexts, but not others.

Using this framework, I argue that courts help autocrats both punish challengers and deter future coordination against the regime. These outcomes are achieved through a trial, defined as a formal, ritualized routine which generates common knowledge regarding the rules of political order. Establishing such rules or laws is vital towards regulating insider conflict within the regime, which is important towards maintaining autocratic survival. I refer to this process, wherein laws and courts are used to repress political rivals, as a judicial strategy of repression.

My findings utilize archival research, fieldwork interviews, and natural language processing of both web-scraped media and historical documents. My research contributes to broader debates on autocratic governance, judicial politics, postcolonial legacies, and varieties of state repression.