International Courts’ Socialization Strategies for Actual and Perceived Performance

Abstract

This chapter presents a framework for understanding how international courts’ (ICs’) use socialization strategies to influence their performance. ICs can influence both their actual and perceived performance through internal and external socialization strategies. ICs can aim to improve their actual performance by socializing actors into ICs’ norms, rules, and procedures, and essentially clarifying their appropriate roles within international courts’ legal regimes. Internally, ICs improve their actual performance by socializing their judges and administrative officials into ICs’ norms, rules, and procedures. In addition, various dimensions of ICs’ actual performance are contingent on other actors’ behaviour within ICs’ legal regimes. ICs can therefore use external socialization strategies to align these actors’ standards of legitimate, appropriate behaviour with ICs’ norms, rules, and procedures, and thus improve ICs’ actual performance. ICs’ external socialization strategies can also be directed towards influencing actors’ perceptions of IC performance. As perceptions of performance are highly subjective and vary considerably among ICs’ various stakeholders, ICs can influence their perceived performance by disseminating particular normative standards for evaluating their performance. A comparative analysis of all twenty-three permanent, operational ICs reveals the prevalence of and variation in ICs’ internal and external socialization strategies, which influence ICs’ actual and perceived performance. Socialization is thus a key means by which ICs aim to improve various dimensions of their performance, as well as their stakeholders’ perceptions of it.

Keywords: international courts, international organizations, international law, legitimacy, norms, socialization, performance