Reform, Justice and Ideology.

[Vivanco]

The following is an essay done for "Research Techniques in Political Science I" course in my University authored by myself.
It is a translation from spanish.

It will be uploaded by parts due to the use to images.

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Reform, Justice and Ideology
Pedro Ramón Vivanco Mata.
University of Burgos

1. INTRODUCTION​

The current state scheme of division of powers is based on the system of the French philosopher Montesquieu, dividing the state into the executive power, the legislative power and the jurisdictional power(1).
When we think of the current political system in Spain, there is no room for doubt in referring to it as a democracy as we find ourselves in the Constitution(2), with its good parts and bad parts (3).
In the constitution itself we can observe in its first article the mention of the idea of justice as a supreme value. Although there have been several analyzes and thinkers who have sought to define in a concrete way what justice is, the most accepted in contemporary times is “justice as fairness” (Rawls, 1971).

Even so, it should be noted that justice does not consist of a static concept, but is in a constant progress of evolution, from Roman times to the present day together with society.
And because society evolves, and so does justice, it makes it inevitable that the legal branches from time to time undergo an analysis of their functions, their actions and their principles to adapt to the new framework that they have to serve. In other words, they pour out the need to reform.

But all reform in a democratic system comes from the hand of popular sovereignty, represented by elections, with a broad and clear political shuffle, so here we have the objective of this work: To check the relationship between ideology and sentiment. of the need to reform the judicial system in the specific case of Spain.

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1. While it has commonly been recognized as a judicial power, a more accurate translation of the original text and current legal authors' analyzes advocate the use of potestas rather than power. See works by Ernesto Pedraz Penalva.
2. Article 1.1 of the Spanish Constitution: "Spain is constituted in a social and democratic State of Law, which advocates freedom, justice, equality and political pluralism as superior values of its legal system"
3. https://www.es.amnesty.org/en-que-estamos/espana/

 

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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK​

In a first search, we did not find any concrete analysis relating the need for reform to ideology. However, we can find studies whose results and analysis could help us in our search, such as Matthew C. Ingram's work on judicial reforms in the three Mexican states.

This first analysis allows us to observe a relationship between the ideology of the people represented as the effect on a political party and the electoral results of the same at the same time as the reform of the Judicial Councils as a body for the administration and organization of justice.

In Aguascalientes, Ingram explains as a right-wing ideology as “technocratic”, “neoliberal” and “with an emphasis on reforming the legal sector as a strategy to obtain a greater market integration strategy”. (Ingram, 2016)
In Michoacán, Ingram explains the reform with the influence of the developers of the first reform project, Alejandro González Gómez and Jaime del Río, highlighting “the progressive influence and anti-Franco activism of the judges (in Spain)” (Ingram, 2016).

In Hidalgo, an ideological position was not adopted under the premise of obtaining "better policies with the objective of winning the elections," which resulted in electoral defeat.
In this specific case, there is only an electoral increase when the reform has followed a leftist ideology, while the reform of a right or center ideology resulted in electoral losses, indicating the unpopularity of this type of reform. compared to left reform.

Following the investigation, we find an analysis carried out by Susan Trevaskes carried out in China and her judicial reform plan of November 2008 and the influence of the different sectors of the Chinese Communist Party with the different organizations of the project, being the most conservative sectors (defined as “the old guard”) those “less prone to the reform plan” (Trevaskes, 2011), contrary to the younger sectors of the party, more in agreement with the need for reform.
Samuel P. Hays analyzes in a similar way the origin of the reform mentality in the "era of progress", in the 1960s, a time of broad social breakdown, especially in the United States of America, such as the March on Washington for work and freedom, by Martin Luther King, the Hippy movement, the Vietnam War and the so-called Chicago Trial of the Seven.

However, in this analysis, Hays defends the impossibility of defining the need for reform with ideology alone, under the reasoning that “political ideology is not sufficient evidence to describe social patterns due to the generalizations included in each one of them. , since they tend to divide political groups between moral and immoral, rational and irrational, efficient and inefficient, which do not fit under political practice. " (Hays, 1964)

He explains, then, the US evolution of reforms throughout history and his ideas, being in a first period with the objective of “showing support for the working class”, an idea that we could currently refer to as a left-wing ideology, which later evolved into the "theory of middle class reform", describing the advancement and reform of this second epoch in the strong emergence of the professions of advanced studies, such as lawyers, professors, etc. ...

It is clear from these analyzes that there is a relationship between the ideology of the people who make up a country or a specific group and the need for reform, not only in general but also in a specific case such as the judicial administration.
As we are working with a clear social aspect such as ideology, of high political trash, political science is the necessary tool with which to obtain empirical results on the relationship between ideology and the reform of the administration of justice.

And yet, following Hays's idea, ideology alone is not enough. In this case we will also have to take age into account, as it also has an influence on the administration of justice, as is the case in the United States in which judges become more liberal (progressive) over time (Roeder, 2015).

 

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3. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK​

Once a concrete analysis and research has been carried out on our topics of interest, we can begin to formulate the hypotheses of this work, which will be the following:

• HYPOTHESIS A: The feeling of need for reform increases the more to the left the person is
• HYPOTHESIS B: The age of the person influences the need for reform in such a way that the older the person, the more need for reform.

Both hypotheses are directional, directly related. However, before being able to explain the relationships, it is necessary to operationalize the hypothesis for an easier handling of the investigation and to specify our variables.
In the first hypothesis, the independent variable consists of the ideology of the person, since it is the one that causes the feeling of need, making this the dependent variable. In order to count and analyze the ideology of the person in the abstract, we will graduate it on a scale of ideological self-location, being 1 more to the left and 10 more to the right as an indicator. In order to account for and analyze the need for reform, as it is an abstract concept, it will be analyzed by grading according to need, from very necessary to not necessary as an indicator. In this hypothesis, we hope that the closer a person gets to 1 in ideology (that is, to the left), the more need the reform will graduate. In other words, the more to the left, the greater the need for reform. In order to analyze this hypothesis we will use the association coefficient of Pearson's R, since being an analysis of two graduations with specific values will help in obtaining the covariation, as they are potentially linearly related.

In the second hypothesis, the independent variable consists of the person's age, being the fact that influences the need for reform, this being our dependent variable in this hypothesis as well. In order to be able to account for the abstract concept of age, we will use years, specifically age ranges, to facilitate the analysis and digestion of the data. As in the previous hypothesis, the need will be measured by graduation of need, from very necessary to not necessary. In this hypothesis, we hope that the older the person is, or is in a higher age range, the more they tend to require a reform of the administration of Justice. In order to analyze this hypothesis, we will use contingency tables as the result is a relationship between two variables, one nominal and the other ordinal, as well as the Etha Coefficient as it is a nominal variable and the other an interval, in our case of ages.

 

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4. ANALYSIS
4.1. Hypothesis A: Ideology and need of reform
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Step by step we will now proceed to define and graphically represent each variable individually in order to understand each piece of the puzzle before it is assembled. The first variable that we will represent will be that of ideological self-location, represented in the following table.

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This table can be represented by taking the absolute frequency and discarding the missing data (Don't Know / No Answer) and translating it into the following histogram.

As we can see with the help of this histogram, the center left is the most prevalent ideological zone.
The next variable that we will represent graphically will be the degree of need for reform of the Administration of Justice in Spain

From this variable I see logical the use, instead of a histogram, a pie chart, using the relative frequency represented in the table as the percentage.

After this graphic manifestation of both variables, we proceed to carry out a cross table in order to obtain a specific analysis of their distribution and relationship, represented in the following graph.

These results, at first glance, tell us how these two variables are related to each other. The variable where we find a higher percentage of people considering the reform of the administration of Justice are in the value 1, on the Left, exceeding 40% of the people who self-identify with the extreme left.
On the contrary, however, the percentage that most defends that the reform of the judicial system is not necessary are those belonging to the extreme right, exceeding 50% of those who ideologically place themselves in that position.
But to be able to affirm the real existence or not of this correlation, we will use the Pearson Coefficient.

In this case, the positive Pearson correlation is slightly close to 1, not very notable but it does exist, although it is closer to 0 than 1, we can say that it is not a null influence, but a reduced one. This is why the higher the number of ideological self-location, the less the need for reform. In other words, the further to the left a person is, the more need for reform there will be.