Judicial reforms in transition: Legacies of the past and dominant political actors in post-communist countries

The breakdown of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe and the incremental democratisation of such regimes is surely one of the most crucial events in the last two decades. In these contexts, the functioning of justice systems has become, more and more, one of the key aspects of the transition process. The establishment of an independent, fair and efficient judicial system is an important instrument for a country breaking with its authoritarian past. Courts become crucial actors in the transition process as they contribute to develop new legislations, to adapt old rules to the new context and to prevent the arbitrary use of power. In this context, the paper analyses the process of judicial reform in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. The paper aims to explore how those theoretical approaches (namely legacies of the past approach and new institution approach), developed by democratic transition studies, and focused on the internal factors of democratization, fare against the evidence from the democratising process of the judiciary in such countries. Particular attention will be focused upon the relationship between the executive and the judiciary and the strategy of the different actors involved in the reform process. The policy dynamics connected to the reforms of the judiciary will be reconstructed using international organization records, newspaper articles and witnesses gathered through semi-structured interviews collected during onsite visits in the analysed countries