ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 presents the theoretical foundations and the book’s key concepts: consistent compliers, partial compliers, pushbackers, and backlashers. The chapter begins with reflections on the difficulty of measuring compliance at the ICC due to confidentiality requirements, which leads the book to take a broader approach to compliance by including compliance with court requests as well as diplomatic actions and public statements. It then highlights existing explanations for compliance and resistance and isolate regime costs as the most promising explanation for compliance with ICC court requests. The chapter expands on how the empirical chapters specify what exactly affects a government’s perception of regime costs: who is the suspect and what does the Court ask the state authorities to do. The chapter ends with a discussion of Court behaviors, especially reform and business as usual. The small reforms at the Court can be explained by the Court’s self-professed identity as a legal and therefore apolitical actor as well as the presence of Court allies among African member states. The chapter also presents the book’s underlying methodology.
