The International Criminal Court - A Global Civil Society Achievement (Hardcover)

This book examines the International Criminal Court (ICC) from a political science and international relations perspective. It describes the main features of the Court and discusses the political negotiations and the on-going clashes between those states who oppose the Court, particularly the United States, and those who defend it.
Secondly it explores how international law-making, and in particular the building of global institutions, has changed in the last decade, using negotiations and struggles surrounding the establishment of the ICC as an example. The input of organizations and individuals from civil society in the process of establishing the ICC was unprecedented and the author goes on to evaluate the merits and difficulties of this new involvement of global civil society in international law-making and institution-building.
The author argues that while global civil society does not deliver global democracy, it does contribute to more transparent, more deliberative and more ethical international decision-making which is ultimately preferable to a world of isolated sovereign states with no accountability outside their borders, or exclusive and secretive state-to-state diplomacy.