ARTICLES

Choi, D., Harris, J. A., and Shen-Bayh, F. 2022. "Ethnic Bias in Judicial Decision-Making: Evidence from Criminal Appeals in Kenya." 1-14. American Political Science Review.
Shen-Bayh, F. 2018. "Strategies of Repression: Judicial and Extrajudicial Methods of Autocratic Survival." World Politics, 70(3), 321-357. 
  • Best Article Award (2019) from Democracy and Autocracy, an organized section of APSA
UNDER REVIEW

Measuring Judicial Politicization in African News Media (with Risa Kitagawa)
  • Invited to revise and resubmit
  • International courts are often seen as political and biased, but how do such ideas take root in public discourse? We introduce a novel measure of judicial politicization that leverages one of the main conduits of information about international institutions: the popular press. By focusing on Kenya during a period when domestic elites came under investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), we study a most-likely case for local media politicization of an international judicial body. We deploy a word embeddings model on 5,292 Kenyan newspaper articles from 2007-2020. Our monthly measure demonstrates significant, fine-grained changes in media portrayals of the ICC, before and after major investigations into Kenyan leadership. Our approach to judicial politicization in local media offers new directions for scholarship on judicial legitimacy, media politics, and public discourse on international institutions.

Justice for Whom? Judicial Populism as Window Dressing in Autocratic Regimes
  • Populists often frame the judiciary as emblematic of the corrupt, illegitimate elite, particularly when judgements go against popular notions of right and wrong. But populist judicial reforms need not bestow power to the people and may instead further entrench the position of elites. How can elites ``popularize'' the courts without truly conceding control? I argue that populist judicial reforms can serve as window dressing for state manipulations of the legal process, concealing top-down interventions in the law as reflections of popular morality. I examine these dynamics in postcolonial Malawi where populism and anti-imperialism were deeply intertwined, resulting in the promotion of supposedly indigenous norms of customary criminal justice pitted against colonial law and courts. I find that in this context, so-called Traditional Courts were ostensibly a gesture of empowerment for the people, but in reality enabled the president to centralize control over criminal punishment and also distracted the public from other pressing problems of law and order. My findings deepen understanding of judicial populism and provide insight into how manipulations of the criminal justice system can strengthen autocratic power.
SELECTED WORKS IN PROGRESS

Democratic Backsliding on the Legislative Floor: Evidence from Zambia. (with Donghyun Danny Choi)
  • How does democratic backsliding affect the behavior of incumbent party and opposition legislators in parliament? We investigate this question in the context of Zambia, which experienced a significant spate of oppression against the opposition party during the Presidency of Edgar Lungu. Using computational text analysis on a corpus of 1,292 parliamentary sessions from 2001—2021, we systematically analyze how legislative debates between incumbent and opposition players evolved during a period of democratic turmoil compared to periods of relative democratic stability. We specifically examine changes in the composition of legislators who speak up during these debates, the topics raised, as well as the extent of incivility across party lines. Our findings reveal how democratic backsliding manifests in the legislative arena, which has implications for freedom of speech and democratic discourse.

“Combating Corruption in African Countries: Foreign Creditors and Domestic Institutions.” (with Leonardo Arriola)
  • Featured in The Calculus of Corruption Reform in Autocratic Regimes. Democracy & Autocracy. Vol. 20(1), 43-48.
  • Although many governments have adopted measures to investigate and prosecute malfeasance by public officials, there remains considerable cross-national variation in institutional responses to high-level corruption. Under what conditions have governments established anti-corruption agencies? What impact have such agencies had on the prevalence of corruption? In addressing such questions, we argue that the origin of anti-corruption agencies ultimately undermined their purpose in African countries. Because governments established agencies to address the concerns of foreign creditors, principally multilateral institutions and Western donors, these agencies have been largely detached from domestic constituencies that might have otherwise demanded results. Moreover, since anti-corruption agencies are tangential to the primary interests of multilateral institutions, they have had little incentive to consistently ensure that agencies fulfill their mandates in practice. We assess these claims by analyzing original cross-national time-series data. Our findings show that anti-corruption agencies were established more rapidly in countries with greater debt service obligations, regardless of domestic political or economic conditions. We further show that anti-corruption agencies have had a negative effect on corruption: perceived levels have grown faster in countries that established agencies early on to satisfy foreign creditors.

"The Politics of Colonial Responsibility: Evidence from British and French Parliamentary Debates." (with Risa Kitagawa)
  • What does the ex-colonizer owe to the ex-colonized? Whether former colonial powers should apologize to their former colonies has become a recent source of debate. Some European governments have begun offering gestures of remorse falling short of reparations, whereas others appear to be more nostalgic for empire and largely unwilling to repent. To fully appreciate popular discourse on the legacies of imperialism and white supremacy in the contemporary era, in this study, we examine the history of political debates on the colonial project. We specifically compare how colonialism has been depicted by France and Britain over the past 150 years of parliamentary proceedings. Using computational text analysis techniques, we parse an original corpus of substantially verbatim reports from the floors of the French and British parliaments. Dissecting debates from 19th century to present day helps us to uncover how the framing of colonialism has evolved over time and across contexts. By taking the long-run historical view, we seek to understand how the terms of debate on colonial rule have evolved both before and after decolonization, as well as how such language has influenced contemporary debates on apology and accountability.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Gloppen, S., Wang, V., Kanyongolo, E. and Shen-Bayh, F. (2022). “Malawi: Democratic Fits and Starts” In Democratic Backsliding in Africa? Autocratization, Resilience, and Contention, eds. L. Arriola, L. Rakner, and N. van de Walle, Oxford University Press
OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Shen-Bayh, F. (2022), Reimagining the judiciary: Women's representation on high courts worldwide. By Escobar-Lemmon, Maria C., Hoekstra, Valerie J., Kang, Alice J., and Kittilson, Miki Caul, New York: Oxford University Press. 2021. pp. 201. $67.43 (cloth). Governance. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12748

Shen-Bayh, F. (2021). Regime threats and state solutions: Bureaucratic loyalty and embeddedness in Kenya, Hassan, Mai, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2020. 308 pp. $99.99 (cloth). Governance. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12624

Arriola, L., Dow, D., and Shen-Bayh, F. 2017. "Regional Responses to Human Rights Violations." Featured in Amnesty International Report: Africa: Counting Gains, Filling Gaps: Strengthening African Union’s Response to Human Rights Violations Committed in Conflict Situations
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