The basic tenets of International Relations have become subject to uncertainty and debate. The academic consensus that dominated the field has cracked with further questions arising on the conventional assumptions’ claim to universality. Post-modernist thinkers, who have challenged its foundation on structured thinking, affirm that normalising discourses within traditional foreign policy position restricts academic advancement in the area. They challenge the notion that geopolitics and national politics are mutually exclusive. They argue for an interpretive approach of IR, which could show that some principles and understanding that shape domestic policymaking may affect foreign policy positions. Their interpretation of politics, including IR, is that, its fundamentals require an interpretive review of actions and their consequences. These reveal the socio-political and environmental influences that help shape policy, which traditional approaches to foreign relations fail to reveal. In over a century, the political situation in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe tilted towards the ideological position of the party in Britain. A debate about the nature of government, human rights, economics and Britain’s role in these, has characterised the foreign policy debate between the two states. The definition of these concepts has depended on the party running Downing Street. The emphasis on similar issues in the 1970s and 1980s differed to that of the late 1990s, indicating divergent interpretations of national interests, which most scholars regard as causal of the apolitical nature of IR. The high levels of public interest Rhodesian/Zimbabwean interests pushed foreign policy into the ideological field of domestic politics. This challenges the IR premises established by convention IR approaches. Thus, using the case study it is clear that dominated views of foreign relations are unable to verify the whole picture of what transpires in a political field.

The rise of international criminal law and the proliferation of international criminal tribunals is one of the most striking developments in international law and international politics over the last two decades. Given the pending closure of the ad hoc tribunals, the question of their legacies has become increasingly topical. This thesis examines the institutional creation of legacies at the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Drawing on extensive field research, including over 230 interviews with key personnel, the thesis examines how each of the tribunals responded to the spectre of organisational decline. It finds an array of actors and institutions actively involved in the perpetuation of their international organisations and in the manufacturing of legacies. Incorporating insights from multiple disciplines, the analysis traces, and explains, variation across these processes of social construction. In theoretical terms, the thesis conceives of ‘legacy building’ as an unexamined yet central coping strategy vis-à-vis organisational demise that is aimed, first and foremost, at meaning making. Challenging the common depiction of legacies as objectively measurable end results, the study demonstrates that legacies are actively produced, not passively acquired. This is shown to be so because the impending closure of international organisations raises existential questions –– at both the institutional and individual level –– about their ownership, legitimacy and raison d’être. Accordingly, the comparative analysis of the ICTY, ICTR, SCSL and ECCC reveals a hectic ‘legacy turn’ in the work of the tribunals that resulted in heightened, though not always effective, organisational reflexivity. The analysis contributes to filling an evident research gap in the study of international law. By showing where legacies come from, it challenges conventional, descriptive portrayals of the development of the international criminal tribunals. It unpacks what conventional accounts take as a given: the existence of legacies. But the research findings are relevant beyond international criminal law. They speak to the broader question of how international organisations portray––and perpetuate––themselves upon the completion of their mandate.

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