Anna Sanders and Dr. Darren Hawkins, Political Science
The International Criminal Court has been an item of some debate both here in the United States and in the international community. The United States opposition and the subsequent creation of a supranational body without it’s support provide an interesting case for studying international organizations. It is puzzling to consider: why would nations go against the wishes of the world superpower and create a court with unparalleled supranational authority? What influences negotiating positions and how did these change throughout the drafting process? We hypothesized that nations’ positions were influenced by their dependence on other nations. More plainly, we supposed that nations’ change in positions would correspond with changes in the positions of those countries on whom they are most dependent (whether it be economically, militarily, politically or otherwise).
To answer these questions we sought to gather data that would back up our hypothesis. This introduced some challenges. First, it is difficult to measure change in political opinion in a manner that it not entirely subjective to opinion. We wanted to measure this change quantitatively so we could include that data in statistical models which could account for a variety of measures of dependence. We chose to analyze the negotiations for the ICC by coding state positions at a variety of points.
The coding process was the most time consuming part of our research project. We wanted to create a variable that would represent how strong or weak of a court states preferred. We chose to do this by looking at their opinions on four core issues of the debate. On each issue we set standards for what statements we considered indications of (1) support for a strong and independent court, (0) discussion of the issue but no clear position stated, and (-1) opposition to a strong and independent court. We coded state positions at fifteen different points in time ending with a rather large data set. This data would act as the dependent variable in our analysis.
Other researchers at our university compiled a large number of independent variables. These measures of dependency addressed various aspects of these relationships: from economic dependency, to military alliances and even regime change. Dr. Jay Goodliffe experimented with a model combining the variables and we came with mixed results. Our results showed that some variables mattered in the ways we thought…increased dependency increased the likelihood that a state would follow another state in their negotiating position. But some relationships were weaker than we anticipated and some were even opposite of the effect we thought should occur. Dr. Goodliffe and Dr. Hawkins have since experimented with a variety of models. I have not been involved in these efforts. But we suppose that some of the mixed results are due to the fact that we measured our dependent variable in 4 areas. This may lead to a state having a strong position on one aspect of the court, but compromising another. Their overall support is their, but it wouldn’t show properly in the measure. We anticipated that if we combined the 4 measures in a certain way we could come up with a composite measure that more accurately portrayed the dynamics of negotiation. I cannot report very accurately on these revisions to the model as they were completed after my involvement on the project.
Besides assisting in coding the data set, I had the opportunity to assist in writing the historical background portion of the paper. It was thrilling to write about the history of the negotiations, a history I knew so well after reading through the negotiations for coding and grazing through a variety of secondary materials. My mentored learning experience was topped off by my experience presenting at the International Studies Association Conference in March 2006 in San Diego California. I learned a great deal throughout this research experience about research design, methods, and my own skills as a researcher. A great deal is left to explore on the aspects of international negotiation and the effects of dependency. I am currently applying to PhD programs in political science and hope that my future career as a researcher will provide many opportunities to contribute to this area of research.