A Cross-National Correlational Analysis on Populist Rhetoric and the Erosion of Judicial Independence

Populist rhetoric is widely theorized to deteriorate liberal democratic institutions and erode judicial independence; however the quantitative argument remains underexplored and underdeveloped. This study conducts correlational analysis by drawing on 283 country-year observations extracted from Hawkin’s Global Populism Database and the V-Dem Judicial Constraints on the Executive (v2x_jucon) index in order to quantitatively establish the correlational relationship between populist rhetoric and judicial independence in a cross-national global setting. This analysis found a statistically significant, moderate negative association between populist rhetoric and judicial independence, thereby empirically corroborating comparative qualitative work. Furthermore, this establishes populism as a potentially effective early warning indicator of democratic backsliding.