Partisan Labels and Democratic Accountability: An Analysis of State Supreme Court Abortion Decisions

Various literatures indicate that partisan labels increase the accountability of elected officials. Correspondingly, advocates of nonpartisan elections claim that this procedure helps liberate officials from political influence. These arguments have been prominent in recent debates regarding the sel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of politics 2009-04, Vol.71 (2), p.560-573
Main Authors: Caldarone, Richard P., Canes-Wrone, Brandice, Clark, Tom S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abortion
Accountability
Decision making
Elections
Government policy
Governors
Judges & magistrates
Judicial Decisions
Judicial elections
Partisanship
Political campaigns
Political conditions
Political elections
Political parties
Political partisanship
Public opinion
State courts
State elections
States (Political Subdivisions)
Supreme Court
Supreme Court decisions
Supreme Courts
U.S.A
Voting
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Summary:Various literatures indicate that partisan labels increase the accountability of elected officials. Correspondingly, advocates of nonpartisan elections claim that this procedure helps liberate officials from political influence. These arguments have been prominent in recent debates regarding the selection of judges in U.S. state courts. We suggest, conversely, that on salient issues nonpartisan elections encourage popular judicial decisions, particularly given recent developments in judicial campaigns. To test this hypothesis, we assemble a dataset that revolves around state supreme courts’ decisions on abortion cases between 1980 and 2006. The analysis—which controls for a variety of factors and uses gubernatorial decisions as a comparative tool—provides strong support for the hypothesis.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1017/S002238160909046X