Collaborative Research: Transparency and the Rule of Law

Scholars and policymakers agree that strong legal institutions are essential for economic development and democratic governance, yet efforts to improve the rule of law in post-communist and developing countries have frequently been stymied. Recent experience offers little hope for successful top-down reforms, as entrenched elites are well-placed to undermine such efforts. This project therefore contributes to the study of law and social science and to the development of effective policies for building the rule of law by shifting attention to an innovative bottom-up, citizen-led effort to improve judicial transparency: the videotaping of court hearings by civil society organizations. The study's focus on Ukraine is particularly timely given that the United States has in recent years devoted extensive resources to support Ukrainian rule-of-law reforms in recognition of Ukraine's prominent role in ongoing geopolitical conflicts between Russia and the West.

The study will consist of a large-scale field experiment. Random assignment of court sessions to 'treatment' (videotaping) and 'control' (no videotaping) conditions will facilitate rigorous evaluation of citizen-led transparency initiatives' impact on key elements of the rule of law, including judicial outcomes, judges' and prosecutors' adherence to procedural rules, and lawyers' perceptions of the judiciary's fairness and independence. Analyses will draw on surveys of lawyers and administrative data collected from Ukrainian courts. The research will result in a novel data set covering approximately 2000 court sessions from five Ukrainian cities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.