This chapter tests the book’s arguments in a case study from Uganda. The Ugandan government faced a series of armed rebellions throughout the country from 1986 to 2006, and it forcibly relocated civilians while fighting some rebel groups but not others. This chapter draws on a wealth of information collected during six months of fieldwork in 2016 and 2017 on how, when, where, and why authorities employed displacement. By exploiting within-case variation in the location and timing of relocation by the same government, the chapter conducts a structured, controlled comparative analysis. Drawing on original data – including archival materials, subnational violence and displacement data, and hundreds of interviews and surveys with political officials, military officers, rank-and-file soldiers, civil society groups, journalists, community leaders, and civilians – it traces the decision by Ugandan counterinsurgents to employ forced relocation, examine the observable implications of the theory, and demonstrate the assortative logic of displacement. It also shows that alternative logics are insufficient to explain variation in this case.

Chapter 3 explores the ways in which states subvert international legal institutions and norms in pursuit of their own security and political interests. This chapter argues that the use of self-referrals to the ICC stems from political calculations that allow political leaders to advance their own domestic and international agendas at the expense of furthering the goals of the international justice regime. Chapter 3 is a story of political calculations, political power, and security interests, and the agency of (African) states in creating and shaping the delivery of international justice. The Ugandan case is studied in depth to hightlight the ways in which self-referrals to the ICC stem from strategic calculations that allow states to use the Court to defeat rebel leaders, warlords, and/or political opponents.