The politics of litigating and adjudicating electoral disputes: Evidence from Zambia

Abstract

Elections are increasingly judicialized in many multiparty regimes. The ability to challenge flawed elections in independent courts can be crucial for democratization, may deter irregularities, and may prevent post-election violence. However, litigating against the elections of opposition candidates can also enable ruling parties to consolidate control following narrow electoral victories. In executive-dominated systems, such a strategy may be facilitated by how uneven access to resources may make litigation particularly attractive for ruling-party candidates and by how judges may feel pressured to nullify opposition victories, triggering by-elections that ruling parties are likely to win. We investigate these expectations using a novel dataset of electoral petitions from the 2011, 2016, and 2021 Zambian elections. We show that losing candidates from the party gaining or retaining control over the executive were more likely to litigate against their losses. However, we find no evidence that judges tended to favor these candidates relative to other petitioners.