Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T14:07:42.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Home-State Interest, Nationalism, and the Legitimacy of the International Criminal Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2021

Nathan T. Carrington Open the ORCID record for Nathan T. Carrington [Opens in a new window]  and
Claire Sigsworth Open the ORCID record for Claire Sigsworth [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although legitimacy is crucial for courts’ efficacy, the sources identified as legitimizing domestic institutions are weaker or absent altogether for international institutions. We use an original, preregistered, nationally representative survey experiment to show that perceived home-state interest strongly affects the legitimacy afforded by UK citizens to the International Criminal Court. Importantly, this relationship is moderated by nationalism. Our findings have implications for state actors in a position to act vis-á-vis international courts, elites seeking to alter opinions toward courts, and courts themselves weighing possible institutional costs of acting against noncompliant states.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 449 - 477
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Bar Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors are listed in alphabetical order and contributed equally in the production of this article. We would like to thank Emma Fountain, Colin French, Shana Gadarian, Laura Jenkins, Thomas Keck, Emily Thorson, participants at the 2019 Law and Society Association Annual Meeting and the 2019 Institute for Humane Studies Graduate Student Research Colloquium, and the four anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback and suggestions. We would also like to thank the Campbell Public Affairs Institute for its financial support for this project. The experiments discussed in this article were conducted with the oversight and approval of the Syracuse University Institutional Review Board, Protocol nos. 21-015 and 19-120, and the main experiment was preregistered with the Open Science Framework prior to data collection. All hypothesis testing described in this article is consistent with the pre-registered plan.

References

REFERENCES

Armaly, Miles T. Forthcoming. “Loyalty over Fairness: Acceptance of Unfair Supreme Court Procedures.” Political Research Quarterly.Google Scholar
Aronow, Peter Michael, Joshua, Kalla, Lilla, Orr, and John, Ternovski. 2020. “Evidence of Rising Rates of Inattentiveness on Lucid in 2020.” SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/8sbe4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bahna, Miloslav. 2019. “Context Matters: Measuring Nationalism in the Countries of the Former Czechoslovakia.” Nationalities Papers 47, no. 1: 2–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baird, Vanessa A. 2001. “Building Institutional Legitiimacy: The Role of Procedural Justice.” Political Research Quarterly 54, no. 2: 333–54.Google Scholar
Bartels, Brandon L., and Johnston, Christopher D.. 2013. “On the Ideological Foundations of Supreme Court Legitimacy in the American Public.” American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 1: 184–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, Brandon L., and Johnston, Christopher D.. 2020. Curbing the Court: Why the Public Constrains Judicial Independence. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BBC News. 2017. “UK Government and Military Accused of War Crimes Cover-Up.” November 17. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50419297.Google Scholar
Benesh, Sara C. 2006. “Understanding Public Confidence in American Courts.” Journal of Politics 68, no. 3: 697–707.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolsen, Toby, Druckman, James N., and Fay, Lomax Cook. 2014. “The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion.” Political Behavior 36, no. 2: 235–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, Allen, and Keohane, Robert O. 2006. “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions.” Ethics & International Affairs 20, no. 4: 405–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and Gibson, James L.. 1995. “The Legitimacy of the Court of Justice in the European Union: Models of Institutional Support.” American Political Science Review 89, no. 2: 356–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, Gregory A., and Gibson, James L.. 1997. “Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union: The Court of Justice and Its Constituents.” International Social Science Journal 49, no. 2: 209–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carpini, Michael X Delli, and Keeter, Scott. 1997. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Chapman, Terrence L., and Chaudoin, Stephen. 2020. “Public Reactions to International Legal Institutions: The International Criminal Court in a Developing Democracy.” Journal of Politics 82, no. 4: 1305–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaudoin, Stephen. 2016. “How Contestation Moderates the Effects of International Institutions: The International Criminal Court and Kenya.” Journal of Politics 78, no. 2: 557–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christenson, Dino P., and David M. Glick. 2015. “Chief Justice Roberts’s Health Care Decision Disrobed: The Microfoundations of the Supreme Court’s Legitimacy.” American Journal of Political Science 59, no. 2: 403–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coenders, Marcel, and Peer, Scheepers. 2003. “The Effect of Education on Nationalism and Ethnic Exclusionism: An International Comparison.” Political Psychology 24, no. 2: 313–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Harlan Grant, Follesdal, Andreas, Grossman, Nienke, and Ulfstein, Geir. 2018. “Legitimacy and International Courts: A Framework.” In Legitimacy and International Courts, edited by Nienke, Grossman, Harlan Grant, Cohen, Andreas, Follesdal, and Geir, Ulfstein, 1–40. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coppock, Alexander, and McClellan, Oliver A.. 2019. “Validating the Demographic, Political, Psychological, and Experimental Results Obtained from a New Source of Online Survey Respondents.” Research & Politics 6, no. 1: 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidov, Eldad. 2009. “Measurement Equivalence of Nationalism and Constructive Patriotism in the ISSP: 34 Countries in a Comparative Perspective.” Political Analysis 17, no. 1: 64–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dellmuth, Lisa Maria, and Jonas, Tallberg. 2020. “Why National and International Legitimacy Beliefs Are Linked: Social Trust as an Antecedent Factor.” Review of International Organizations 15, no. 2: 311–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, James N. 2001. “On the Limits of Framing Effects: Who Can Frame?” Journal of Politics 63, no. 4: 1041–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Figueiredo, Rui J. P., and Elkins, Zachary. 2003. “Are Patriots Bigots? An Inquiry into the Vices of In-Group Pride.” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 1: 171–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnemore, Martha. 1996. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franco, Annie, Neil, Malhotra, Gabor, Simonovits, and Zigerell, L. J.. 2017. “Developing Standards for Post-Hoc Weighting in Population-Based Survey Experiments.” Journal of Experimental Political Science 4, no. 2: 161–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L. 2011. “A Note of Caution About the Meaning of ‘the Supreme Court Can Usually Be Trusted …’” Law & Courts: Newsletter of the Law & Courts Section of the American Political Science Association 21, no. 3: 10–16.Google Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 1992. “Blacks and the United States Supreme Court: Models of Diffuse Support.” Journal of Politics 54, no. 4: 1120–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 1995. “The Legitimacy of Transnational Legal Institutions: Compliance, Support, and the European Court of Justice.” American Journal of Political Science 39, no. 2: 459–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 1998. “Changes in the Legitimacy of the European Court of Justice: A Post-Maastricht Analysis.” British Journal of Political Science 28, no. 1: 63–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 2009a. Citizens, Courts, and Confirmations: Positivity Theory and the Judgements of the American People. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Caldeira, Gregory A.. 2009b. “Knowing the Supreme Court? A Reconsideration of Public Ignorance of the High Court.” Journal of Politics 71, no. 2: 429–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L, Caldeira, Gregory A, and Baird, Vanessa A. 1998. “On the Legitimacy of National High Courts.” American Political Science Review 92, no. 2: 343–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., Caldeira, Gregory A., and Lester, Kenyatta Spence. 2003. “Measuring Attitudes toward the United States Supreme Court.” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2: 354–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, James L., and Nelson, Michael J.. 2014. “The Legitimacy of the US Supreme Court: Conventional Wisdoms and Recent Challenges Thereto.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 10, no. 1: 201–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosskopf, Anke, and Mondak, Jeffery J. 1998. “Do Attitudes toward Specific Supreme Court Decisions Matter? The Impact of Webster and Texas v. Johnson on Public Confidence in the Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 51, no. 3: 633–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Guardian. 2019. “War Crimes Claims against UK Troops Need ICC Scrutiny, Says Labour,” November 18. http://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/nov/18/uk-army-war-crimes-iraq-afghanistan-bbc-panorama.Google Scholar
Harrell, Peter E. 2019. “Could the U.S. Sanction the International Criminal Court.” Lawfare, March 9. https://www.lawfareblog.com/could-us-sanction-international-criminal-court.Google Scholar
Hjerm, Mikael. 1998. “National Identities, National Pride and Xenophobia: A Comparison of Four Western Countries.” Acta Sociologica 41, no. 4: 335–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2020. “US Sanctions on the International Criminal Court: Questions and Answers.” December 14. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/12/14/us-sanctions-international-criminal-court#_What_does_it_1.Google Scholar
Hurd, Ian. 1999. “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics.” International Organization 53, no. 2: 379–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurd, Ian. 2008. After Anarchy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
ICC (International Criminal Court). 2019. Report on Preliminary Examination Activities (2019). December 5. https://www.icc-cpi.int/itemsDocuments/191205-rep-otp-PE.pdf.Google Scholar
ICC (International Criminal Court). 2020. Statement of the Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, on the Conclusion of the Preliminary Examination of the Situation in Iraq/United Kingdom. December 9. https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=201209-otp-statement-iraq-uk.Google Scholar
Jackson, Jonathan, Ben, Bradford, Mike, Hough, Jouni, Kuha, Sally, Stares, Sally, Widdop, Rory, Fitzgerald, Maria, Yordanova, and Todor, Galev. 2011. “Developing European Indicators of Trust in Justice.” European Journal of Criminology 8, no. 4: 267–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Lawrence R., and Shapiro, Robert Y.. 2000. Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kelemen, Daniel. 2012. “The Political Foundations of Judicial Independence in the European Union.” Journal of European Public Policy 19, no. 1: 43–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krehbiel, Jay N. Forthcoming. “Public Awareness and the Behavior of Unpopular Courts.” British Journal of Political Science.Google Scholar
Latcheva, Rossalina. 2010. “Nationalism versus Patriotism, or the Floating Border? National Identification and Ethnic Exclusion in Post-Communist Bulgaria.” Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology 1, no. 2: 187–215.Google Scholar
Lenz, Gabriel S. 2012. Follow the Leader? How Voters Respond to Politicians’ Policies and Performance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, Margaret, Audrey, Sacks, and Tyler, Tom R.. 2009. “Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs.” American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 3: 354–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, Lilliana. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miratrix, Luke W., Sekhon, Jasjeet S., Theodoridis, Alexander G., and Campos, Luis F.. 2018. “Worth Weighting? How to Think About and Use Weights in Survey Experiments.” Political Analysis 26, no. 3: 275–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Michael J., and Gibson, James L.. 2019. “How Does Hyperpoliticized Rhetoric Affect the US Supreme Court’s Legitimacy?” Journal of Politics 81, no. 4: 1512–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peyton, Kyle, Huber, Gregory A, and Coppock, Alexander. Forthcoming. “The Generalizability of Online Experiments Conducted during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Journal of Experimental Political Science Google Scholar
Schatz, Robert T, Ervin, Staub, and Howard, Lavine. 1999. “On the Varieties of National Attachment: Blind Versus Constructive Patriotism.” Political Psychology 20, no. 1: 151–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simmons, Alan J. 2017. “Domestic Attitudes towards International Jurisdiction over Human Rights Violations.” Human Rights Review 18, no. 3: 321–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staton, Jeffrey K., and Moore, Will H.. 2011. “Judicial Power in Domestic and International Politics.” International Organization 65, no. 3: 553–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strother, Logan, and Shana, Kushner Gadarian. 2019. “The Supreme Court in a Polarized Era: Is Legitimacy at Risk?” June 6. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3426819 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3426819.Google Scholar
Tallberg, Jonas, and Michael, Zürn. 2019. “The Legitimacy and Legitimation of International Organizations: Introduction and Framework.” Review of International Organizations 14, no. 4: 581–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tesler, Michael. 2015. “Priming Predispositions and Changing Policy Positions: An Account of When Mass Opinion Is Primed or Changed.” American Journal of Political Science 59 no. 4: 806–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trinkner, Rick, and Tyler, Tom R.. 2016. “Legal Socialization: Coercion versus Consent in an Era of Mistrust.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 12: 417–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. 2006. “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation.” Annual Review of Psychology 57, no. 1: 375–400.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tyler, Tom R., Casper, Jonathan D., and Bonnie, Fisher. 1989. “Maintaining Allegiance toward Political Authorities: The Role of Prior Attitudes and the Use of Fair Procedures.” American Journal of Political Science 33, no. 3: 629–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyler, Tom R., and Trinkner, Rick. 2017. Why Children Follow Rules. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanberg, Georg. 2005. The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Voeten, Erik. 2013. “Public Opinion and the Legitimacy of International Courts.” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 14, no. 2: 411–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voeten, Erik. 2020. “Populism and Backlashes against International Courts.” Perspectives on Politics 18, no. 2: 407–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldes, Jutta. 1996. “Constructing National Interests.” European Journal of International Relations 2, no. 3: 275–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1992. “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46, no. 2: 391–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zilis, Michael A. 2018. “Minority Groups and Judicial Legitimacy: Group Affect and the Incentives for Judicial Responsiveness.” Political Research Quarterly 71, no. 2: 270–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zvobgo, Kelebogile. 2019. “Human Rights versus National Interests: Shifting US Public Attitudes on the International Criminal Court.” International Studies Quarterly 63, no. 4: 1065–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Carrington and Sigsworth supplementary material

Carrington and Sigsworth supplementary material

Download Carrington and Sigsworth supplementary material(File)
File 2.5 MB