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The Institutionalization of the International Criminal Court pp 31–56Cite as

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Theorizing the Institutionalization of the International Criminal Court

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Abstract

This chapter starts with an overview of realist, liberal, and reflectivist explanations for the institutionalization of the ICC. It then proceeds to the concept of normative binding. Normative binding is triggered by unilateral policies and power disparity between the leading state and other actors. When secondary powers cannot balance in hard power terms without taking high security or economic risks, normative binding allows them to check the behavior of the leader. By resorting to normative binding, states initiate new norms and institutions that, once institutionalized and valid, can limit the scope of maneuver of also reluctant states. Successful institutionalization of norms potentially increases the legitimacy of the norm entrepreneur, the binder, which in the case of the ICC is the EU, as it succeeds in shaping the standards of international behavior and in offering an alternative multilateral order to the existing one. The conclusion compares normative binding to the alternative explanations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Norms are understood as standards of behavior, principles as purposes that actors are expected to pursue, and rules as specific rights and obligations of actors. Keohane (1984, 57–58).

  2. 2.

    “American exceptionalism has at least three separate elements. First, the United States signs on to international human rights and humanitarian law conventions and treaties and then exempts itself from their provisions by explicit reservation, nonratification, or noncompliance. Second, the United States maintains double standards: judging itself and its friends by more permissive criteria than it does its enemies. Third, the United States denies jurisdiction to human rights law within its own domestic law, insisting on the self-contained authority of its own domestic rights tradition” (Ignatieff 2005, 3; see also Byers and Nolte 2003).

  3. 3.

    The logic of soft power is “getting others to want the outcomes that you want,” (Nye 2004, 5) and it is based on cultural attractiveness, political values and behavior, and legitimate foreign policies.

  4. 4.

    Smart power addresses the question of how the USA should combine its hard (Weber 1922, 28) and soft power in order to enhance its global role. Using smart power means investing more on global public goods and institutions, with which one can win strong allies and increase influence (Nye 2004, 11; Armitage and Nye 2007; Wilson 2008, 616).

  5. 5.

    A civilian power is “an actor which uses civilian means for persuasion, to pursue civilian ends, and whose foreign policy-making process is subject to democratic control or public scrutiny” (Smith 2005, 68–69; see also Duchêne 1973; Maull 1990).

  6. 6.

    Normative power is understood as the “ability to shape conceptions of ‘normal’” (Manners 2002, 239). Arguably, the EU has normative power, if it can influence the perception of others about appropriate behavior. Normative power works through the logic of social diffusion, and its exercise takes the form of persuasion, invoking norms, shaping discourse, or showing an example (Diez and Manners 2007, 174; Pace 2007).

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    Salla Huikuri

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Huikuri, S. (2019). Theorizing the Institutionalization of the International Criminal Court. In: The Institutionalization of the International Criminal Court. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95585-8_2

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