IACC: Taking Anti-Corruption to The Next Level?

In a 2018 journal article titled World Needs International Anti-Corruption Court, senior judge Mark Wolf presented an argument in favor of an international anti-corruption court (IACC), an ambitious project to diminish the destructive consequences of grand-scale corruption by a public official, most notably state leaders, that may not be possible to be dealt in a domestic level. The idea springs from the 2016 Global Declaration Against Corruption and the 2003 UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), pledged and signed by 182 countries to commitment to pursuing and punishing acts of corruption. With such agreement, he argues that it implicitly recognized the inadequacy of the existing institutions to tackle corruption, and the exploration for innovative solutions is needed in dealing with the issue. This article argues that the IACC is a viable and possible solution to tackling grand corruption cases. This article will focus on three arguments: the possibility for the already existing mechanism for an international court, direct enforcement of the existing UNCAC without domestic political interference, and lastly, the further utilization of public approval and influence in effecting a government’s legitimacy.

The idea of an international court is not a foreign concept in this day and age. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first permanent international criminal court to ever existed. Formally established in 1998 and begins operating in 2002, the court was made as a reaction to the growing global intolerance towards genocide and the abuse of human rights. In determining its mechanism, criminal acts classified within its jurisdiction, and ways of conduct, the court is firmly built within the Rome Statute, which acts as the body’s constitution and mandate. Although critics may have suggested its inefficiency in performance, considering its record of only achieving five convictions throughout its existence, the organization has successfully changed the perception of the international court and increased its legitimacy in the public’s eyes (Wolf, 2018; UN General Assembly 1998; United Nations, 1999). Although reforming the ICC to include corruption cases as part of its jurisdiction would give not only more straightforward methods but also funding effectiveness, Wolf (2018) argues that the reopening of the Rome Statute to expand its jurisdiction may lead to the endangerment of the organization from efforts to disband or emasculate. Thus, the IACC is hoped to be developed as a new independent international judicial body, similar yet separated from the ICC.

Adopting a similar framework to the ICC, the IACC will employ prosecutors globally with the necessary experience and expertise to develop a compelling case and maintain its impartiality. The court will also be grounded within the principle of complementarity, thus maintaining the primary jurisdiction of national courts over corruption cases. The IACC will only be allowed to exercise its jurisdiction once the nation has been proven unwilling or incapable of making reasonable faith efforts to investigate, prosecute, and punish its leaders and accomplices participating in the corruption, effectively making the IACC a judicial last resort in dealing grand corruption cases without intervening against national sovereignty (Wolf, 2018). From this understanding, the IACC proposal can be considered not such a far-fetched idea. Although ambitious, it is not an impossibility, as shown by the existence of the ICC, which already shows promising changes regarding tackling human rights violations.

Secondly, it is no secret that governments maintain secrecy over their information. Access to government information is not a rare issue to be discussed, especially in political studies. Gibbs (1995) attributes these conditions to three main approaches in viewing the rationale behind the decision. While the external approach focuses on the issue of possible security threats from enemies outside the state and the bureaucratic approach assumes classified information as a byproduct of inefficient government administrative processes, the internal threat approach argues that the general public is considered the principal target that the secret is intended. In this approach, it is implied that maintaining information secrecy is meant for the benefit of actors taking part in the specific classified information and not for the state on its own. Thus, it is assumed that government officials will make special efforts to conceal critical information that may cause controversial actions to be exposed to the public and lead to their discredit.

From the notion above, one can consider the major possibility for government apparatus to maintain key information out of public eyes for their personal political security. The establishment of the IACC would provide an additional judicial process beyond the state’s jurisdiction and direct control, creating a new third-party investigator and judgment above the reach of any domestic political manipulation. By also understanding that grand corruption involves discretionary calculative crime, the existence of the IACC would help in giving the sense of risk for sanction that may have been eliminated at the domestic level through official controls of power in the process of prosecution and punishment, thus also support in the prevention for government leaders in enriching themselves corruptly (Wolf, 2018). From the conditions above, it can now come the last consideration for the IACC is the utilization of public approval and influence in maintaining the government’s legitimacy. Fox (2018) describes government legitimacy as an act of creation and maintenance in the feeling of correct and proper among constituents. Legitimacy becomes a key reason behind people’s willingness to obey rules and consider a government worthy of ruling.

As mentioned previously, a probable reason for state secrecy may be caused by an effort to protect government officials and apparatus from a devastating controversy to the public (Gibbs, 1995). Upon this notion, it is easily accepted that public opinion remains a crucial foundation for a government’s legitimacy as it is essentially located within the mind and the collective beliefs. While the guarantee for direct judicial punishment may be deterring enough for apparatuses to commit corruption, the IACC may be far more effective due to its ability to universalize the norm of anti-corruption among the general public worldwide. Social norms can be considered the combination of injunctive norms that focus on right and wrong; and descriptive norms that focus on the perceived frequency of a particular behavior being conducted in a community. While social norms can help maintain the pervasiveness of systematic corruption in society and cement it into a perpetual social trap, they can also contribute to eradicating corruption (Kubbe & Engelbert, 2018).

Indeed, the biggest question then is how social norms can be changed. Among various application approaches can be made through a top-down exogenous shock on all levels of society (Kubbe & Engelbert, 2018). Although the UNCAC has given an early step towards a global commitment to eradicating corruption, it is still limited in creating an effective transformation as a domestic judicial system (which can be considered to remain under corruptive government officials and control) plays a critical final role in the law’s implementation. The IACC, as mentioned previously, would bring not only a more excellent guarantee for the eventual conviction and punishment of these high-ranking officials but also an institution that would cause a cultural and social shock upon a society, stripping all possible corruptive secrecy that had been maintained over the years. It may build public discontentment from the conduct and shakedown of the existing perceived social norms that have led to the flourishment of corruption in the first place. In addition, combined efforts between the international organizations with the IACC can also be utilized to guarantee the country’s eventual submission and ratification of the law, as both economic sanctions and aid can be used as possible bargaining chip in the law’s enforcement (Wolf, 2018). Regardless, such a system would deter potential corruptive leaders from committing the crime while guaranteeing the eventual societal reformation of how they perceive corruption.

Although one can say that the IACC is an ambitious project, it is indeed not an impossibility nor even an ineffective solution in the end. Those three aforementioned arguments, namely the possibility for the already existing mechanism for an international court, direct enforcement of the existing UNCAC without domestic political interference, and the further utilization of public approval and influence in effecting a government’s legitimacy, have demonstrated that the IACC is a viable and possible solution in tackling the existence of grand corruption cases. Indeed, the IACC is still under consideration and is currently just a plan; nevertheless, it can be concluded that the establishment of the international court may guarantee not only the eventual conviction of corruptive high-ranking elites in grand corruption but also support the propagation of top-down anti-corruption social norms in the future.

Bibliography

Fox, J. (2018). An Introduction to Religion and Politics: Theory and Practice (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Gibbs, D. N. (1995). Secrecy and International Relations. Journal of Peace Research, 32(2), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343395032002007

Kubbe, I., & Engelbert, A. (2018). Corruption and Norms: Why Informal Rules Matter. Palgrave Macmillan.

UN General Assembly. (1998). Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (last amended 2010).

United Nations. (1999). Establishment of an international criminal court - overview. United Nations. Retrieved December 11, 2021, from https://legal.un.org/icc/general/overview.htm.

Wolf, M. L. (2018). The World Needs an International Anti-Corruption Court. Daedalus, 147(3), 144–156. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_00507