The paper aims to explain which factors are relevant for state cooperation with international criminal courts and tribunals (ICTs). It reviews international relations and legal theory to identify variables which are then tested by use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on 16 cases related to Kenya's, Uganda's, Serbia's and Croatia's cooperation with the ICC and the ICTY. It is differentiated between two groups of variables: a) state-proximate e.g. ‘domestic pressure’, ‘norm institutionalization’ and ‘perceived legitimacy of the ICT’ b) courts/policymakers-proximate e.g. ‘court structure’, ‘ICT’s external communication’ and ‘international pressure’. The 2-step QCA (Schneider and Wagemann, 2006) is used to account for interaction between the 2 variable groups with the aim to examine how different constellations of court-proximate variables operate when faced with individual states.
