The International Criminal Justice Marketplace of Ideas: Setting the Agenda for Responses to Sexual Violence

Abstract

The field of international criminal justice is supported and legitimised by a distinct marketplace of norms and ideas. On this marketplace, stakeholders compete to affect the dominant norms, conceptual frames and practical direction of international criminal justice. Inspired by a sociological framework, this article investigates the marketplace where different agents and organisations compete to set the agenda for international criminal justice. To study the relational agenda-setting practices of these stakeholders, the article builds on an original dataset of annual reports produced by international criminal tribunals, academic articles and NGO reports published between 1994 and 2018. Employing Structural Topic Modelling, the article offers a data-driven and empirically informed analysis of core developments in the marketplace of ideas of the field of international criminal justice. Having identified and analysed key agendas developed over time, the analysis zooms in on a specific topic related to sexual violence. The spread and influence of this topic demonstrates how normative agendas developed by specific stakeholders can have broader effects in the field.

Keywords: international criminal justice, agenda-setting, structured topic modelling, sexual crimes