The Court takes the Stand: An investigation of the public responses of the International Criminal Court to state-led resistance

Abstract

This thesis investigates the responses of the International Criminal Court to state-led resistance. After arguing for a stronger distinction between International Courts (ICs) and other International Organizations (IOs), the thesis discusses state-led resistance of ICs and how Courts can respond to that resistance. These theoretical concepts are complemented by a discussion on authority delegation structures and agent-trustee relations. Through qualitative content analysis, a coding scheme was inductively created through a pilot study and subsequently applied to a dataset containing various public outings of the Court. The study finds that there is a clear division of labor between various institutional actors based on a distinct communicative profile. These profiles are used to characterize various institutional archetypical roles. Furthermore, the study finds significant variation in Court responses when distinguishing resistance based on membership, compliance and type of resistance. The thesis contributes to the literature on international courts and IO responses to resistance, while providing the first robust coding scheme for IC responses to resistance.