Judiciary in Bolivia

By: V-Dem Staff
Mar 11, 2015


In this week’s graph we will take a closer look at the judiciary, on which V-Dem offers no less than 59 indicators; the scores for Bolivia on three of them are included in the graph below. In a democracy, it is of crucial importance that the judiciary is independent from political influence and that judges are held accountable for misconduct in order to ensure the rule of law. When looking at Bolivia it is interesting to note the sharp decrease in government attacks on judiciary in the beginning of the 1980s, the irregular patterns during the 1990s and then the quite dramatic change from 2000 where the indicator drops, indicating more attacks taking place. Judicial accountability shows a similar pattern in regards to lower scores around 2003-2004.

The positive change in the beginning of the 1980s is also reflected in both high court independence and judicial accountability, most likely reflecting the political liberalization experienced by Bolivia following the authoritarian regime headed by García Meza Meza. The judicial accountability indicator reflects how often judges are removed from their posts or otherwise disciplined when they have been found guilty of serious misconduct, while the third indicator depicted in the graph measures the degree of high court independence of government pressure.