The effects and the effectiveness of the International Criminal Court: a game-theoretic analysis

Ali, Nada (2014) The effects and the effectiveness of the International Criminal Court: a game-theoretic analysis. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Traditional legal literature on the International Criminal Court (ICC) has generally sidestepped the question of enforcement. Approaches to questions of the Court’s effectiveness have also largely ignored the demand for credible, legitimate and relevant administration of international criminal justice. The said literature displays an obvious lack of concern for the impact of institutions such as the ICC on prospects of democratic transformations in post-conflict societies. This Thesis posits that the critical goals of the international criminal justice regime are best achieved by integrating concerns for democratic transitions in post-conflict societies in the debate about the effectiveness of the
ICC. Building on a nascent game theoretic literature, the Thesis advances three theoretical models to show that: (i) because of a lack of distinction between crimes committed by government leaders on the one hand, and by opposition groups on the other, ICC prosecutions may incentivize leader crimes as opposed to deterring them; (ii) to enhance the effectiveness of the Court, leniency programs targeted towards lower-level perpetrators should be utilized (as is the case in anti-trust law enforcement and the fight against organized crime); and (iii) leniency programs may enhance deterrence (by making it costlier for leaders to commit crimes) and may also enable the ICC to gather convincing evidence of the commission of atrocities. This, in turn, is expected to lead to the collapse of political structures responsible for the commission of international crimes. The central insight of the Thesis is that the ICC could be both self-enforcing and relevant to questions of political transformation in post-conflict societies provided innovative approaches to law enforcement are used. The Thesis provides preliminary and counterintuitive theoretical pronouncements that need to be verified by further elaborations of the models and appropriate empirical investigations of the effects and the effectiveness of criminal prosecutions by the ICC.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law
Depositing User:	Users 2593 not found.
Date Deposited:	15 Jun 2015 13:16
Last Modified:	15 Jun 2015 13:16
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/53357
DOI:

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