In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Deborah Saki, covers the new article by Genevieve Bates, University of Wisconsin–Madison, “Threats and Commitments: International Tribunals and Domestic Trials in Peace Negotiations”.
Genocide, civil wars, rebel violence, and mass atrocities happen all over the world. So how do countries ever confront their worst injustices instead of just burying them under the carpet and moving on? A new study by political scientist Genevieve Bates reveals the International Criminal Court as a large factor that unwittingly forces governments and rebels to handle injustices through domestic trials in their peace deals.
After wars or dictatorships end, countries often try to deal with past crimes through transitional justice. This can include trials, truth commissions, reparations, or other ways to address any injustices that occurred. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created in 2002 to punish the worst crimes, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, but only when the country itself is unwilling or unable to do it. However, the ICC has a key rule called complementarity, which specifies that it only steps in if the home country is not genuinely handling the cases. This gives countries a way to keep the ICC out by showing they are willing to hold their own trials.
Since 2002, more than 800 peace agreements have been signed in countries that were embroiled in civil wars. Bates investigates whether countries that were under some level of ICC watch included domestic trials in their peace agreements, to prove to the ICC that they could handle their own business. This helps analyze whether ICC, through its threat or actual involvement, make the people negotiating peace more likely to promise that they will hold trials at home.
The study used two approaches to test this idea. First, it examined the content of every peace agreement related to civil conflict signed between 2002 and 2019. There were 832 agreements in total. It then used a public database called PA-X that had coded the content of each agreement. For each agreement the study checked one clear thing: did it contain a specific promise to hold domestic trials (or at least refuse amnesty for the worst crimes like genocide and war crimes).
“The case studies confirmed that ICC involvement pushed them to create a special domestic court system.”The study also measured the exact level of ICC involvement in each country at the time the agreement was signed, dividing it into three categories: no involvement, threat (the ICC had opened a preliminary examination or formal investigation, but had not yet issued arrest warrants), and intervention (the ICC had issued arrest warrants, started trials, or reached convictions).
Statistical models were run that compared whether agreements signed under “threat” or “intervention” were more likely to include trial promises than agreements with no ICC involvement. Many control variables were also included for other possible explanations. The statistical analysis was complemented by two in-depth case studies, one in Colombia, and the other in Sudan.
The statistical analysis showed that both the threat of ICC involvement and actual intervention made it about seven times more likely that a peace agreement would include a promise to hold domestic trials. The case studies confirmed that ICC involvement pushed them to create a special domestic court system. Bates also noted that while some promises of domestic justice started as “window dressing,” that is, leaders agreeing to them just to keep the ICC away, once those promises were written into the peace deal, they could later push real action.
In short, the study finds that the ICC does change peace negotiations. It gives leaders a strong reason to promise domestic trials so they can avoid facing justice in the international arena. This is one clear way the court is helping push some accountability into peace agreements around the world.
- Deborah Saki is a PhD candidate in political science at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on post-conflict governance, ethnic recognition, and nation-building in post-conflict states. She is currently an Elinor Ostrom Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She has previously worked in communications for the World Affairs Council of Atlanta. She enjoys public facing writing, with her work appearing in Inside Higher Ed, Times Higher Ed, and other publications.
- BATES, GENEVIEVE. 2025. “Threats and Commitments: International Tribunals and Domestic Trials in Peace Negotiations”, American Political Science Review, 1–16.
- About the APSA Public Scholarship Program.
Be the first to comment