5 - Bureaucrats, Budgets, and Backlash: Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts

Summary

Chapter 5 examines two subtle forms of backlash politics: bureaucratic and budgetary restrictions. Using examples from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the ICC, this chapter explains why states turn to these bureaucratic and budgetary levers to undermine international courts. By imposing bureaucratic restrictions and tightening the tribunals’ purse strings, states and political elites can undermine the structural, adjudicative, and normative authority of courts. While this form of backlash politics does not garner the same attention as withdrawals or threatened substitutions, as the case studies show, it can be equally damaging. Moreover, because of the tribunals’ abiding dependence on member states for material and staff support, it is particularly difficult for the tribunals to guard against this form of backlash.