Publication

Organizational sense-making in international institutions:

The International Criminal Court’s response to contestation by African states parties

Author

Gisela Hirschmann

Date

09 January 2026

Links

› Springer Nature Link

In its short history, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has repeatedly faced contestation by states, which reached a first peak in 2016 with the threat of mass withdrawal by its African members. While the reasons for the contestation and the court’s judicial responses to it have been widely studied, this article analyses the internal dynamics that shape the ICC’s contestation management. Relying on the concept of organisational sense-making from crisis research, I argue that contestation management is crucially determined by the ICC’s crisis perception and interpretation. Drawing on primary documents and interviews with ICC staff and state representatives, I demonstrate how the ICC’s collective crisis perception and interpretation shaped its responses to contestation by African states parties. Whereas, initially, contestation was understood primarily in relation to individual cases with little impact on the court’s overall relationship with African states, a potential African mass withdrawal was perceived as a fundamental threat to the ICC’s existence. Understanding this change in crisis perception and interpretation is crucial to explaining why contestation management shifted from a legalistic, case-based approach to a comprehensive and coordinated response that has continued to impact its institutional and operational structures.