Sandholtz: Implementing the International Criminal Court

Wayne Sandholtz (Univ. of Southern California - International Relations) has posted Implementing the International Criminal Court. Here's the abstract:

The International Criminal Court (ICC) sits atop a legal regime that depends heavily on national governments and institutions of criminal justice in two crucial ways. First, the ICC exercises “complementary” jurisdiction, prosecuting only when states cannot or will not do so. National courts should prosecute the lion’s share of ICC crimes. Second, the ICC will depend on the cooperation of national institutions and officials for everything from gaining custody of the accused to gathering evidence and securing witnesses. In order to play their role in the ICC system, states must enact legislation that addresses both aspects of their relationship with the ICC: complementarity and cooperation. Because implementation legislation is costly, states that enact complementarity and cooperation laws display a higher level of commitment to the ICC than those who do not. This paper tests the hypotheses that democracies and states with transitional justice mechanisms underway will be more likely to enact implementing legislation and that states that are most involved in armed conflict abroad – whether through war or United Nations peacekeeping operations – will be less likely to do so. The analysis of data from more than 150 countries employs a Heckman selection model that takes into account whether states have ratified the Rome Statute in the first place. The results strongly confirm the democracy and transitional justice hypotheses, but states involved in international wars are actually more likely to pass ICC implementing legislation.