Criminal accountability at what cost? Norm conflict, UN peace operations and the International Criminal Court
| Author | Gisela Hirschmann,Tom Buitelaar |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066120972758 |
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120972758
European Journal of
International Relations
2021, Vol. 27(2) 548 –571
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120972758
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Criminal accountability at
what cost? Norm conflict,
UN peace operations and the
International Criminal Court
Tom Buitelaar
and Gisela Hirschmann
Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Netherlands
Abstract
How do international organisations (IOs) balance norms that have conflicting
prescriptions? In this article, we build on the literature on norm contestation and norm
conflict to identify four ways in which IOs might respond to norm conflicts: (1) consistent
norm prioritisation; (2) ad hoc norm prioritisation; (3) balanced norm reconciliation
and (4) imbalanced norm reconciliation. How IOs are more likely to respond, we argue,
depends on the salience of the norm conflict and the relative strength of the conflicting
norms. We illustrate our argument by investigating the norm conflicts that the United
Nations (UN) encountered between traditional UN peacekeeping norms and the
norm of international criminal accountability in the context of assistance by UN peace
operations to the International Criminal Court. Distinguishing between behaviour and
discourse as well as headquarters and field levels, we argue that the UN’s response
strategies have been largely successful at reducing the tensions generated by the
norm conflicts, but that in the longer term they run the risk of both undermining the
international criminal accountability norm and damaging the acceptance and credibility
of UN peace operations.
Keywords
International Criminal Court, peacekeeping, norms, conflict, International Relations,
global institutions
Corresponding author:
Tom Buitelaar, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, Leiden 2333 AK,
Netherlands.
Email: t.j.a.buitelaar@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
972758EJT0010.1177/1354066120972758European Journal of International RelationsBuitelaar and Hirschmann
research-article2020
Article
Buitelaar and Hirschmann 549
Introduction
The evolution of international norms has sparked renewed interest in recent International
Relations (IR) research on the tension that might arise between two norms with conflict-
ing behavioural implications. Earlier scholarship assumed that new norms evolve only
when they fit into the framework of existing norms (Florini, 1996). Empirically, how-
ever, we have been observing the evolution of a number of new international norms that
either oppose each other or challenge existing norms. The emerging global health secu-
rity norm, for example, is challenging the existing norms of sovereignty and non-inter-
ference (Kreuder-Sonnen, 2019) and the norm to protect civilians is challenging the
impartiality norm of peacekeeping operations (Paddon Rhoads, 2016). These examples
indicate that norm collisions arising out of the evolution of new norms are rather com-
mon, not only resulting from ‘overlapping spheres of authority’ but also between norms
that originated within the same level of international authority (Kreuder-Sonnen and
Zürn, 2020).
How do actors balance norms that have conflicting prescriptions? Research in IR on
how transnational norms are translated into domestic contexts (f.e. Acharya, 2004;
Zimmermann, 2016) has identified several strategies that states use to address such (ver-
tical) norm conflicts. Further research has been undertaken with regard to the question of
how states respond to two conflicting international norms (horizontal norm conflicts)
(Peltner, 2017; Saltnes, 2019). However, there is little literature so far on how interna-
tional organisations (IOs) respond when they encounter such horizontal norm conflicts
(Gholiagha et al., 2020). Therefore, in this article we draw on insights from both the lit-
erature on norm contestation and norm conflict to investigate how IOs respond to norm
conflicts. We suggest four types of responses that IOs are likely to use in such situations:
consistent prioritisation; ad hoc prioritisation; balanced reconciliation; and imbalanced
reconciliation. We contend that the complexity of IOs requires distinguishing between
headquarter and field-level responses to reveal potential discrepancies and congruencies
inside an IO. We use discourse and action-related indicators to operationalise the four
strategies with regard to the different implementation sites. We argue that two attributes
of the norm conflict make particular responses more or less likely: its salience and the
relative strength of the conflicting norms.
We base our argument on existing scholarship on norm contestation and norm con-
flict. Scholars who study norm contestation have revealed how norms remain unsettled
even after institutionalisation (Wiener, 2014). They demonstrate that actors frequently
enter into behavioural or discursive conflict over how to interpret norms or which norm
to implement in a given context (Stimmer and Wisken, 2019). However, this focus on
how, when and why norms are contested, still leaves a knowledge gap on what imple-
menting agents do in situations where they have to balance two different international
norms, neither of which they want to replace.
Such situations more closely resemble the focus of researchers who study norm con-
flict. They investigate a specific aspect of norm implementation, namely what happens
when actors face two norms that prescribe different actions in a situation of choice
(Peltner, 2017; Rueland, 2018; Saltnes, 2019; Welsh, 2019; Zürn et al., 2018). While
inspired by the study of norm contestation, analyses of norm conflict stand out in at least
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