Politics of Constructing the International Criminal Court: NGOs, Discourse, and Agency »

Michael J. Struett is an Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University. He studied at the University of California, Irvine, George Washington University, and the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on the evolution of institutions of global governance.

The book analyzes the political process that led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It argues that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played an important role in shaping key provisions in the Court’s statute and in achieving early ratification of the ICC Statute. NGOs were able to achieve this result through their use of principled, communicatively rational argument. Thus in addition to accounting for the particular outcome of the ICC negotiations, the book also makes a contribution to our theoretical understandings of the ways that NGO discourse can transform the process of policy formation in world politics.

List of Figures

List of Tables

1 The Meaning of the International Criminal Court 1

2 Norm Contestation in World Politics: Civil Society, States, and Discourse 13

3 Discursive Limits: The Failure to Establish an International Criminal Court; 1946-1954 49

4 Context: An Opening for an International Criminal Court; 1989-1994 67

5 Negotiations: NGOs Shape the Terms of the ICC Debate; 1995-1998 83

6 Building the Rome Statute: 1998 109

7 Principled Discourse and the Drive for Ratification: 1998-2002 131

8 The Legitimacy of the International Criminal Court 151

Postscript: Construction Continues 179

Notes 183

Bibliography 201

Index 213