Ideology and Strategy among Politicians: The Case of Judicial Independence

Politicians act strategically. In the face of competition they modify their decisions in order to restrict the latitude of their potential successors. On the other hand, politicians have ideological preferences that also affect their decisions. The literature, however, has neglected to fully explore the interaction between these two considerations. This work offers such an analysis, using an empirical investigation of judicial independence as an example. We show that when the interaction between ideological considerations and strategic ones is accounted for, the impact of political competition on the level of judicial independence that politicians prefer - may in fact be opposite to the traditional wisdom.