The Power and Politicized Expansion of the International Criminal Court Öffentlichkeit

Abstract

Abstract
This dissertation contributes to an understanding of why national leaders voluntarily accept the
jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), granting it the authority to prosecute them.
It theorizes that leaders trade off the risk of unwanted prosecutions against the deterrent threat
that prosecutions pose to political rivals and patrons of domestic enemies, who may conspire to
violently oust leaders. The risk of unwanted prosecutions and the ICC's deterrent threat both arise
because the court's prosecutions credibly communicate guilt for atrocities and may trigger leader-specific
sanctions by wealthy donor states that prefer to keep politicians who commit atrocities out
of office. Three qualities explain the ICC's credibility: a legitimacy quality, an investment quality,
and a reputational quality. Empirical analysis of panel data on leaders and all modern international
criminal courts supports the theory. National leaders accept the ICC's jurisdiction when it can
deter their rivals from anti-regime violence--when the state depends heavily on development
capital disbursed by wealthy democracies--and when the leaders can limit their own exposure
to prosecution. The protection leaders obtain under the ICC's jurisdiction gives them longer and
more peaceful terms in office. If an international criminal court--including, but not limited to,
the ICC--indicts them, however, their chance of losing office increases greatly. If they insist on
remaining in power, both the state's receipt of development capital and its domestic production
tumble. These courts' indictments prove to be more consequential than other public reports about
prosecutable human-rights abuses ostensibly committed by the leader's administration. The ICC's
power is real, but it has gaps, politicizing the expansion of its jurisdiction.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
1 Introduction 1
1.1 International criminal courts and the punishment of atrocity . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 The question and the argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Plan of the dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix 1: Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Perspectives on International Criminal Courts 13
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 The political-culture perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.1 The principled-justice theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.2 The coordination theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.3 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2.4 Concluding thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 The persuasion perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.3.1 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.3.2 Concluding thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4 The diffuse-reciprocity perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.4.1 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4.2 Concluding thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.5 The civil-peace perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.5.1 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.5.2 Concluding thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.6 The soft-balancing perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.6.1 Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.6.2 Concluding thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Appendix 2: Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3 Why Leaders Accept the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court 57
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2 Why prosecutions hurt careers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3 Why leaders accept the court's jurisdiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.3.1 The court's effect on the threat to leaders from their rivals and enemies . 62
3.3.2 A leader's exposure to unwanted prosecutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.4 Empirical implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.4.1 The decision to accept the court's jurisdiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.4.2 The effects of the court's jurisdiction on political survival and anti-regime
violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.4.3 The economic effects of indictments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4 Development, Conflict, and the International Criminal Court's Jurisdiction 75
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.2 Review of hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.3 Operationalization and data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.4 Empirical strategy and estimation framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.5.1 Hypothesis 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.5.2 Hypotheses 2 and 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.6 Energy rents and dictators' aid: wrenches in the machine? . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Appendix 4.A: Technical details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Appendix 4.B: Tables and figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5 The Consequences of Indictment 101
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.2 Review of hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.3 Operationalization and data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
5.4 Empirical strategy and estimation framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.5.1 Hypothesis 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.5.2 Hypothesis 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.5.3 Hypothesis 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.6 Case studies of states whose incumbents were indicted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Appendix 5: Tables and figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
6 The History of the International Criminal Court 121
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.2 The orthodox history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.3 The revised history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3.1 "We were infiltrated" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.3.2 "Uttermost ends of the earth" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.3.3 Explaining the appearance of the court after the Cold War . . . . . . . . 135
6.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Appendix 5: Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
7 Conclusion 141
7.1 Summary of the dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
7.2 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
References 149

LIST OF TABLES
4.1 Summary of the multiply imputed panel data, 1998(3)-2008(4) . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.2 Models predicting whether a leader ratified the Rome Statute, 1998(3)-2008(4):
Estimates of bp and dz from varying-intercepts logits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3 Rome-Statute ratification status of states receiving at or above the 90th percentile
($1.65B) of development capital from rich democracies in at least one quarter,
1998(3)-2008(4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4 Models predicting a leader's exit from office and civil conflict, 1998(3)-2008(4):
Estimates of bp and dz from varying-intercepts regressions and quantities of
interest derived from the models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.5 Fourteen-fold geopolitical classification of states used in the multiple imputation
procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.1 Summary of the multiply imputed panel data, 1993(1)-2008(4) . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.2 Investigations of atrocities by international criminal courts, 1948-2012 . . . . . . 117
5.3 Levels of The Political Terror Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.4 Models predicting leaders' tenure, receipts of development capital from wealthy
democracies, and GDP, 1993(1)-2008(4): Estimates of bp from varying-intercepts
regressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Time series of Wikipedia searches for "International Criminal Court" versus
searches for "United States Supreme Court" and "European Court of Human
Rights," 2008-2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2 Abnormalities in Google search volumes for politicians targeted for prosecution
by international criminal courts, 2004-2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3 Cumulative and per-quarter Rome Statute ratifications, 1998-2008 . . . . . . . . 12
2.1 The interactive relationship between democracy, a history of civil conflict, and the
choice to ratify the Rome Statute, 1998-2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.1 The effect of development capital from wealthy democracies on the probability
that a leader ratifies the Rome Statute, 1998-2008: Estimates from Model 1 . . . 95
4.2 Development capital disbursed by democracies and autocracies, 1990-2008 . . . 100
5.1 Time series of development capital flows, exports, and GDP for states whose
incumbents were indicted by international criminal courts, 1993-2010 . . . . . . 120
6.1 Development capital disbursed by democracies and autocracies, 1960-2008 . . . 139
6.2 Insurgencies, material support, sanctuary, and insurgent victories in insurgencies
beginning each year, 1808-2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Political Science
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Political Science, International Law and Relations Economics, General Political Science, General
Stichwort	international courts, international law, international institutions, international relations, foreign aid, leader-specific, civil war, International Criminal Court, The Hague, International Monetary Fund, The World Bank, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, international criminal justice, humanitarian law, human rights
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Reiter, Dan, Emory University
Committee Members	Staton, Jeffrey, Emory University Reinhardt, Eric, Emory University Stam, Allan C., University of Michigan Davis III, David, Emory University

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