The International Criminal Court, Sitting Heads of State Prosecutions, and the Paradox of the Balance of Power
| Author | Mattia Cacciatori |
| Position | Department of Politics, Languages, and International Studies University of Bath |
| Pages | 465-481 |
Compliance with international law is commonly accepted as strengthening inter-
-state relationships and, therefore, consolidating inter-state politics. This article
argues that, in certain circumstances, hostility to international law can be regar-
ded as indicative of shifts in the balance of power that undermine the enforcement
of injunctions of international law. These, it will be shown, need to be addressed
through inter-state dialogue. To sustain the argument proposed, the article focuses,
from an international relations perspective, on the resistance to the practice of
prosecuting sitting Heads of State by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The
prosecution of a sitting Head of State is considered in this article as the poster-
-child of liberal institutionalism. The track record of the ICC in this domain is
worrying: out of 3 situations (Omar al Bashir in Sudan; Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya;
Following theoretical plexuses derived from the English School of international
relations, and particularly Hedley Bull’s “Paradox of the Balance of Power”, the
-
bate on the potential prosecution of Bashar al Assad in Syria. This is done to show
article argues, more attention should be dedicated to the resistance to the prosecu-
tions of sitting Heads of State to understand the implications that this might have
for the balance of power, and in the construction of a truly pluralist international
society based on inter-state dialogue.
International Criminal Court, International Relations, English School of
International Relations, Dialogue; Paradox
© 2019 Mattia Cacciatori, published by Sciendo.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.
8 Br. J. Am. Leg. Studies (2019)
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466
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