This project, submitted under the Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) program, examines the willingness of citizens to sue. How does the idea to redress grievances in courts first occur in developing democracies where people previously did not view the courts as the final arbiter of disputes nor imagine the possibility of taking their governments to court? Who are the pioneers in taking legal action against governments? The researchers hypothesize that wealthy or otherwise privileged individuals are the "judicial pioneers" in developing democracies, a finding that contrasts with expectations generated by those who study litigation patterns in established democracies. In developing democracies, it is suspected that the barriers to entry are too high for the disadvantaged and that only the relatively advantaged can break down these barriers and attempt to hold governments accountable. The hypothesized mechanisms connecting advantage to judicial pioneering include greater expectations of satisfactory outcomes, greater perceptions of judicial procedural fairness, greater experience with other democratic institutions or specifically with the judicial process, great support for democracy, and greater internal efficacy. By determining the importance for judicial pioneers of expectations of satisfactory outcomes relative to these other variables, major questions in the judicial politics and democratization literatures will be answered. This research study litigants in Russia's first major class action lawsuit - a case where 38 of the 600-800 victims in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis recently initiated claims against the city of Moscow for an unprecedented $40 million. They have been granted a hearing scheduled for January 16, 2003. Social scientists rarely if ever have the opportunity to study judicial pioneers who decide to take the risk of litigation in a vacuum of information and experience. It is essential therefore to document this first case as the building block for the literatures on litigation, judicial legitimacy, the "judicialization of politics," and democratic consolidation. This project advances knowledge about how underrepresented groups in new democracies access judiciaries by litigating and thus how their rights come to be protected by the legal system. In addition, this project sheds light on public attitudes toward new government institutions in emerging democracies.
