International tribunal backlash remains poorly understood: hampered by conceptual challenges, systematic research into the causes of this phenomenon remains nascent. The present article makes two contributions to advancing this endeavour. First, building on existing literature, it sets out a working definition of international tribunal backlash, tailored to facilitate mixed method empirical research into the causes of backlash across institutions and sectors. Second, drawing on international relations’ pluralist turn, the article provides an analytically eclectic theoretical scaffold for causal analysis of international tribunal backlash, enabling standardised cross-institutional and sectoral comparison without over-simplifying the complexity of backlash in various instances. The article accordingly provides the building blocks for improved understanding of the causes of – and the potential scope to manage – international tribunal backlash across institutions, regions and sectors.

Civil war has been a fact of political life throughout recorded history. However, unlike inter-state wars, international law has not traditionally regulated such conflicts. How then can we explain the post-1945 emergence and evolution of international treaty rules regulating the conduct of internal armed conflict: the 'Civil War Regime'? Negotiating Civil War combines insights derived from Realist, Rationalist, Liberal, and Constructivist approaches to International Relations to answer this question, revisiting the negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocols, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This study provides a rigorous, critical account of the making of the Civil War Regime. Sophisticated and persuasive, it illustrates the complex interplay of material, ideational, social, and strategic factors in shaping these rules with important lessons for the making and unmaking of international law in a rapidly shifting international political, economic, and security environment.