Judicial Review and Political Bias: Consensual vs. Majoritarian Democracy

Due to the collapse of the party system during the mid-nineties, Italy represents an interesting case study to test the effects of a transition from a consensual to a majoritarian democracy on judicial behavior at the level of the Constitutional Court. Using a dataset of 853 cases of substantive judicial review (it ricorsi in via principale) from 1985 to 2005, and proposing new measures of political alignment within constitutional review, we analyze the effect of a change in the political party system on judicial behavior. Our results show that political alignment is a stronger predictor of judicial decision under majoritarian than consensual democracy.