Judges' Law: Ideology and Coalition in Mexico's Electoral Tribunal

Abstract

We report work in progress. The paper investigates the voting records of members of Mexico's Federal Election Tribunal (TRIFE) between 1996 and 2006. We employ Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to fit a Bayesian measurement model of ideal points for eight judges' who served in the period. Our results show that, even if judges seldom vote divided, systematic cleavages appear when they do. Judges have policy preferences spreading them along an ideological space roughly in three groups.

Keywords: roll call voting, judges, election regulation, Mexico

JEL Classification: D72, K39