Replication Data for: Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights

How does backlash from consolidated democracies affect the behavior of liberal international institutions? We argue that liberal international institutions have incentives to appease their democratic critics. Liberal institutions rely on democratic support for their continued effectiveness and can accommodate democratic critics at a lower legitimacy cost than non-democratic challengers. We examine this theory in the context of the European Court of Human Rights using a new dataset of rulings until 2019 and a coding of government positions during multiple reform conferences. Combining matching and a difference-in-differences design, we find strong evidence that the Court exercises restraint towards consolidated democracies that have criticized the Court in multilateral reform conferences by rendering fewer violation judgments against these states. We find some evidence that governments have also recently appointed more deferential judges. The findings suggest that backlash can affect liberal international institutions even without membership exit.

巩固型民主国家的抵制行为如何影响自由国际机制（liberal international institutions）的运作逻辑？本文提出，自由国际机制存在安抚其民主批评者的动机：这类机制的持续有效性依赖民主国家的支持，且相较于非民主挑战者，顺应民主批评者所需承担的合法性成本更低。本文以欧洲人权法院（European Court of Human Rights）为研究情境，采用截至2019年的裁决新数据集，以及对多次改革会议中各国政府立场的编码标注，对上述理论展开实证检验。结合匹配法与双重差分法（difference-in-differences）的研究设计，本文得到强有力的实证证据：欧洲人权法院会对在多边改革会议中批评自身的巩固型民主国家采取克制策略，针对这些国家作出的违反公约裁决数量显著更少。本文还发现一定实证证据表明，各国政府近年任命了更多顺从该法院的法官。研究结果显示，即便不存在成员国退出的情况，抵制行为也能够对自由国际机制产生影响。