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Abstract
This study argues that the proximity to a general election would affect the frequency of the opposition parties' referrals to the constitutional court. This effect is hypothesized to be conditioned on the opposition parties' prediction of the upcoming election results. To test this theory, I constructed an original data set including all acts promulgated by Turkish Parliament and all cases that were brought to the constitutional court by the opposition parties during 1984-2011. The results show that once the opposition party believes that it will lose the election, it increases its referrals to the court as election approaches.
Keywords
opposition parties, judicial review, litigation, constitutional courts, developing democracies
Introduction
The formation of higher courts with extensive jurisdic- tion led to the expansion of judicial power in many coun- tries. By reviewing laws and decrees under the rubric of constitutionality, constitutional courts began to serve as a control and constraint mechanism against the other branches of government. Accordingly, it is stated that courts "have developed into powerful institutional actors or policymakers" (Shapiro and Stone-Sweet 1994, 401) who "direct the making of public policies" (Tate 1995, 28). This increasing involvement of the courts in address- ing and resolving public policy questions and political controversies is often referred to as the judicialization of politics (Hirschl 2006).
Arguing that the judicialization of politics does not derive from a single cause, many scholars have tried to account for the institutional and political features that are necessary to create and sustain this phenomenon (e.g., Gauri and Brinks 2008; Ginsburg 2003; Hirschl 2006; Stone-Sweet 2000; Tate and Vallinder 1995). Despite their differences, all of these scholars suggest that, at the bare minimum, the judicialization of politics requires a relatively independent judiciary. This proposition implies that if judges can make decisions independent of any external factors, individuals or political oppositions will be more likely to bring their policy claims against the government to the court. This does, however, raise the question of why, in developing democracies where the judiciary is not fully independent, political opposition parties frequently bring public policy questions before the constitutional court and thus judicialize politics.
Are the political opposition parties willing to refer a bill to the court to increase their public vote share or secure more...