Plea Bargains for Peace? The Prospects of the International Criminal Court Reducing Atrocities Through Negotiated Settlements

Abstract

Can the International Criminal Court (ICC) use negotiated settlements to reduce atrocities? To fulfill its mandate of preventing grave crimes, the ICC has favored a strict enforcement approach while eschewing negotiations. Nonetheless, indictees (mis)perceive that they can have their indictments withdrawn, which unintentionally incentivizes indictees to limit violence. I evaluate this dynamic using the weighted regression method generalized synthetic control (GSC) to mitigate endogeneity and data unreliability, which are persistent challenges in analyses of ICC effectiveness. I apply the method to an armed group-level dataset along with a case study of the Lord's Resistance Army. The results indicate that ICC indictments lead to a substantial initial decline in attacks against civilians by armed groups affiliated with indictees, but the attacks return to pre-indictment levels when indictees face sustained punishments. The findings imply that the ICC negotiating settlements could incentivize indictees to refrain from atrocities.