Franziska Boehme, Ph.D.
f_b93@txstate.edu
Texas State University
City: San Marcos, Texas
Country: United States
About Me:
Starting in 2019, I will work as as Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. After completing my PhD at the Department of Political Science at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in June 2017, I worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Gettysburg College. My research interests lie at the intersection of International Law/International Organization and domestic politics, with a focus on the influence both spheres have on one another. Substantively, my research has examined these themes in the human rights realm. My book project builds on dissertation research explaining compliance and changing forms of cooperation between the International Criminal Court and its states parties.My research has been supported through a Small Research Grant from the American Political Science Association, a Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation and a research grant from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. My work has been published in the International Journal of Transitional Justice and the International Journal of Human Rights.
Research Interests
International Law & Organization
Human Rights
International Criminal Court
Compliance
My Research:
My research focuses on accountability for past atrocities, specifically the interaction between international organizations/courts and regional and domestic politics. By exploring the political underpinnings of accountability decisions, I explore the ‘compliance gap’ at the heart of international institutions. I am currently revising my dissertation into a book manuscript. I plan to submit a book proposal in 2018 with the University of Pennsylvania Press and complete the manuscript until 2020. My dissertation investigated the political dynamics surrounding compliance between global, regional, and domestic actors by focusing on international criminal law, specifically asking when and why states parties to the International Criminal Court (ICC, or the Court) cooperate with it.Beyond research focused on the ICC, I am currently collecting data for an article about Germany and its genocide of the Herero and Nama people in the early twentieth century. While the genocide has been a topic for many years in the German political arena, parliamentarians have faced renewed pressure to address it since 2016 after Namibia’s renewed calls to acknowledge the genocide and pay compensation. I investigate why it has taken Germany so long to address this historical responsibility.also research the interaction between global and regional norms in a co-authored project in which we investigate how the World Health Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the ICC have responded to stakeholder claims for greater cultural sensitivity. While these organizations serve a global constituency and work based on a global mandate, they are increasingly asked to consider different regional and local understandings of health, intellectual property, and justice.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Because cultural diversity tends to fall within the purview of the state and related scholarly discussions about multiculturalism, its international relevance has largely been sidelined. However, a plethora of actors are making national, religious, and ethnic claims within international organizations, and new institutions have even been created to address some of these concerns. Building upon Nancy Fraser’s recognition framework, we assess the extent to which international organizations, whose mandate is not cultural per se, find diversity claims on their agendas. We sample how three organizations from different issue areas—the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Criminal Court (ICC)—are confronted with and respond to claims for cultural recognition. In conclusion, we highlight general insights from variation in the politics of recognition that should guide further comparative analysis.
This article examines state cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) through a case study of South Africa’s non-arrest of ICC suspect-at-large, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, in June 2015. Al-Bashir’s visit to South Africa brings attention to the question of why initially Court-supportive countries fail to cooperate with the ICC. Confronted with noncooperation pressure by the African Union (AU), South Africa faced a loyalty conflict in which it had to choose between its commitment to the AU and its commitment to the ICC. I argue that the South African executive’s non-arrest decision prioritized the country’s regional political reputation over its global reputation as a human rights supporter. By investigating a specific cooperation incident years after South Africa’s initial commitment to the ICC, the article highlights the temporal dimension of compliance. Incidents like these can point to potentially new perspectives on compliance and noncompliance.
The article examines how states talk about the International Criminal Court (ICC, or the Court) through the lens of Albert Hirschman’s exit, voice and loyalty framework. Based on a content analysis of country statements about the ICC from 2002 to 2016, I show that support for the Court remains high cross-regionally and longitudinally. Exit rhetoric remains low and only recently entered the Court discourse. Exit is moderated by states’ high loyalty to the Court and the underlying individual accountability norm. Voice is used widely as states criticise the Court, but more so the United Nations Security Council and other states for their lack of cooperation. I argue that applying Hirschman’s framework to the Court necessitates a rethinking of exit and voice calculations. The article contributes to our understanding of the ICC by providing a first comprehensive portrait of what states like and dislike about the Court. The findings also challenge common accounts of the Court as the source of ineffectiveness by highlighting the influence of other actors on the Court’s performance. The article adds a discursive dimension to compliance studies, which so far have overwhelmingly focused on state behaviour, including ratification patterns.