Why do states of the Global South initiate international criminal justice processes for domestic atrocity crimes? The phenomenon of Southern agency regarding international criminal justice presents an empirical and theoretical puzzle given the Southern states' defence of Westphalian sovereignty, or the juridical equality of states and domestic non-intervention. International criminal justice challenges this notion of sovereignty by directly prosecuting individuals under international law through international courts. This thesis rejects this theoretical notion that international criminal justice curbs sovereignty, and argues that the initiative for international criminal justice processes is a type of short-term political strategy adopted by Southern state actors to strengthen specific aspects of their statehood. In doing so, the thesis challenges the dominant theoretical explanations of Southern state preference that relies on their relative weakness and the power of external factors, such as Great Power interests or transnational activist networks, and reclaims the possibility of agency for Southern state actors. The argument is derived from a theory developed in this thesis, referred to as judicial extraversion, or a counter-structural theory of strategic action that links the politics of statehood in the Global South and the political opportunities inherent in the nature of international criminal justice, namely, the individualisation of responsibility, criminalisation of specific forms of violence, and the privileged status of the state in the international criminal justice system. It develops this theory through the qualitative case studies of Uganda's self-referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), Cambodia's request for an international criminal tribunal to the UN, and the counterexample of Colombia's special domestic criminal justice process for paramilitary demobilisation. The thesis finds that relative weakness of Southern states is insufficient to explain engagement with international criminal justice, and highlights the possibility of paradoxical agency. Finally, the findings suggest that, under particular circumstances, international criminal justice can be used to entrench the authority of weaker states in the international system.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:724966 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Han, Yuna Christine |
| Contributors | Hurrell, Andrew ; Welsh, Jennifer |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:86495512-c83a-48e5-b27d-4cdcb1aeefd7 |
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