Toga Party: The Political Basis of Judicial Investigations against MPs in Italy (1983–2013)

Andrea Ceron and Marco Mainenti

South European Society and Politics, 2015, vol. 20, issue 2, 223-242

Abstract: Scholars agree that ideology affects judicial decision-making. We demonstrate that this proposition holds true even when the judiciary is independent of political control. Focusing on Italy (1983–2013), where the politicisation of the judiciary was an issue well before the entry of Berlusconi into politics, we estimate judicial orientations according to the support for factions within the National Judiciary Association. The results show that ideology affects trial court activity against deputies. As the support for left-wing factions increases, prosecutors are more likely to investigate right-wing parties. Conversely, as the share of right-leaning factions grows, investigations of moderate or rightist parties decrease.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13608746.2015.1031054 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:fsesxx:v:20:y:2015:i:2:p:223-242

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/fses20

DOI: 10.1080/13608746.2015.1031054

Access Statistics for this article

South European Society and Politics is currently edited by Susannah Verney

More articles in South European Society and Politics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().