Electoral Success at the ICC: A State-Level Analysis

This article seeks to understand why some candidates are elected to the International Criminal Court (ICC) bench, while others are not, using a state-level analysis between the years 2003 to 2020. Two interrelated analyses are used. The first measures the levels of judicial representativeness based on geography, gender, and expertise. This provides a conceptualization of 'electoral success' that is then situated within state-level judicial nomination processes to better understand the level of judicial representation on the ICC bench by state. The overall argument is that three types of states have had the most judicial electoral success at the ICC: (i) states that have contributed the most financially to the Court; (ii) states that have allocated the necessary amount of human resources to ensure that their candidates were successfully elected, especially in the form of vote trading and diplomatic lobbying; and (iii) states where the ICC is, or has been, involved in an investigation. The problem of politicization at both the domestic and international level(s) permeates the analysis herein.