Replication Data for: The Costs of Court Curbing

Canonical models of interbranch relations assume that incumbents undermine well-respected courts at their own peril. Although court curbing proposals are frequent in diverse political and institutional contexts, there have been few efforts to examine the electoral costs of interbranch aggression. Drawing upon vignette and conjoint experiments, we find some evidence that the public will punish incumbents for attacks on courts. However, the size of the effect varies: it is largest among individuals who hold the court in high esteem and can be mitigated by copartisanship with the proposer. Moreover, once information about partisanship and issue positions is available to respondents, the effect of supporting court curbing is smaller than those other considerations. These results have implications for the public's willingness to safeguard the institutional separation of powers via the electoral connection and suggest that politicians may engage in activities that erode democracy without a broad loss of public support.部门间关系的经典模型假定，在任官员若攻击广受尊崇的司法机关，将自担风险。尽管在多元政治与制度语境中，限制司法机关权限的提案屡见不鲜，但学界迄今鲜有研究探讨部门间对抗行为所引发的选举代价。本研究依托情景实验（vignette experiment）与联合分析实验（conjoint experiment），发现部分证据表明，民众会因在任官员攻击司法机关而对其予以惩罚。不过该效应的强度存在差异：在对司法机关抱有高度敬意的受访者群体中，该效应最为显著，且可通过与提案者的同党派身份加以弱化。此外，若向受访者提供党派立场与议题立场的相关信息后，支持限制司法机关权限的行为所产生的影响，将弱于上述其他考量因素。上述研究结果对于民众通过选举联结维护权力分立制度架构的意愿具有启示意义，同时也表明，政客可能会从事侵蚀民主的行为，却不会因此遭遇公众支持的大面积流失。