How do external threats affect leaders' incentives to repress? We argue that external threats both increase and decrease state repression, but through different causal pathways. Directly, external threats provide leaders with political cover to use repression against political opponents. Indirectly, threats incentivize leaders to augment state capacity, which decreases the likelihood of state repression. To test this argument, we develop a new latent measure of external threat using a Bayesian measurement model. We use mediation analysis to examine the direct and indirect effects of external threats on repression in developing countries from 1980 to 2016. We find that external threats increase government repression directly, but indirectly decrease repression through stronger state capacity. Our findings have implications for how international factors connect to domestic politics to help explain state repression. In addition, our new measure of external threat will help scholars study the consequences of the international threat environment.

In what ways do amicus curiae or friend of the court briefs shape the decisions of constitutional courts outside of the United States? Using a unique data set of more than nine hundred briefs from the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, hearing cases of constitutional review and legal interpretation, we analyze the Court’s propensities to both borrow language from briefs and cite the identity of interested parties. We find that the Court is more inclined to incorporate language from briefs by powerful government actors rather than non-governmental groups. Furthermore, the Court’s alignment with the governing coalition and the type of constitutional review also influence the propensity to borrow language from briefs. However, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court does not appear to favor citing any particular interested party. These results question whether the briefing process in Bulgaria lives up to democratic expectations for including less powerful civil society viewpoints into decision-making. The study is one of the few of its kind to explore how the reasoning found within the brief influences an important national high court outside of the United States.