International governance and local resistance in Kosovo: The thin line between ethical, emancipatory and exclusionary politics

This paper examines the emergence and implications of local resistance against the practice of liberal peace-building in post-conflict Kosovo, as pursued by the international community and local authorities. Exploring the prospects and limitations of local resistance, as articulated through social movements and institutionalised forms of politics, enables us to examine the applicability and potential implications of post-liberal and emancipatory peace, approaches recently propogated by critical approaches to peace-building. Drawing on an original analysis of the discourse and affirmative action of local resistance against the international governance of Kosovo, this paper will argue that different types of local resistance articulate a thin line between ethical, emancipatory and exclusionary practices. Due to the inherent contradictions of resistance movements, the challenges associated with local ownership, grassroots democratisation, and the emancipation and empowerment of local agency cannot be resolved entirely. Indeed, there is a persistent danger that subalterns articulate their needs and interests not only according to an acceptable public transcript for the group’s inner dynamics, but also in relation to the dominant authority, whether it is local or international. This paper illustrates that where there is power there will be resistance, and where there is resistance there will be exclusion and further subordination

Human security as ‘Ethnic Security’ in Kosovo

In Kosovo, the concept of human security is invoked in a three-fold manner. First of all, the international community has applied human security for the purpose of maintaining a fragile peace and stability in Kosovo. For the international community, maintaining the fragile peace meant tolerating the establishment and operationalization of Serbian parallel institutions. This leads to the second application of human security: the parallel institutions claim that their existence is necessary to provide human security for the Serbian community in Kosovo. Consequently, this undermines the capacity of Kosovo’s public institutions to exercise legal authority in the north of Kosovo and in other territorial enclaves. Parallel to this, Kosovo’s institutions have viewed the human security approach as a means to prove the institutional capacity of independent self-government to provide inclusive security, welfare, and integration policies for all people in Kosovo, with a special emphasis on ethnic minorities. Accordingly, human security is used by different actors in Kosovo to pursue different political agendas, which have not resulted in achieving the primary goal of furthering human welfare and fulfilment beyond mere physical security. To the contrary, the (ab)use of human security has created the conditions for fragile governance, protracted ethnic destabilization, and stagnating economic and human development

Minority consultative bodies in Kosovo: A quest for effective emancipation or elusive participation?

This paper examines the extent to which effective political participation can be achieved through minority consultative bodies, and what obstacles and shortcomings can potentially occur in practice. It explores the Kosovo case, where a variety of minority consultative bodies were established in recent years to ensure effective minority participation and representation at the highest decision-making levels. It will be argued that despite the prospects of the established legal and institutional framework, these bodies have fallen short in providing meaningful representation of minority interests and needs in Kosovo. This is largely affected by the intermeshed interests of elites among the majority and minority communities that prioritize their narrow interests to the expense of the developmental and emancipatory needs of marginalized minorities in Kosovo. Hence, higher commitment and cooperation between governmental authorities and minority representatives, together with adequate resources, are critical for ensuring effective minority participation in the public sphere

Recognizing Kosovo’s independence: Remedial secession or earned sovereignty?

This paper examines the main justifications for recognising Kosovo’s ndependence: ‘remedial secession’ and ‘earned sovereignty’. Our paper begins by examining the applicability of the doctrine of remedial secession to Kosovo, the justifications for which can be seen clearly in the decade from 1989 to 1999. However, we argue that the doctrine of remedial secession was insufficiently ripe, in political and legal terms, to be used in 1999 to support Kosovo’s independence. An opposing approach is that of ‘earned sovereignty’ which aims to provide for the managed devolution of sovereign authority and functions from a state to a sub-state entity, resulting either in independence or rehabilitated autonomy within the host state. Based on the case of Kosovo, we propose an alternative explanation to this observed path towards recognisable’ statehood: ‘remedial sovereignty’ whereby a people realise statehood by invoking remedial secession and undergoing a transitional period of mediated international administration, characterized by elements of sovereignty which are externally designed and internally earned. Therefore, we propose ‘remedial sovereignty’ as a useful paradigm to provide the international community with a framework to confer statehood on those peoples for whom there is no other choice, thereby resolving the ‘recognition dilemma’ experienced in the aftermath of the Kosovo’s declaration of independence

The obstacles to sustainable peace and democracy in post-independence Kosovo

This article examines how the prospects for building a sustainable peace, establishing a democratic polity and consolidating sovereignty in Kosovo are constrained by a number of endogenous and exogenous factors. The article highlights how the fragmentation of sovereignty is affected by Serb parallel structures and an overlapping and divided international presence, and how social emancipation is obstructed by weak governance, ethnic power-sharing and social injustice. The article argues that building sustainable peace is more likely when there is sufficient local autonomy and ownership of processes, an effective functioning of democracy and state institutions, as well as social emancipation and a locally-owned transformation of ethnic hostilities and differences

Disentangling the impact of peacebuilding: intentionality, consequences, and responsibility

This thesis disentangles the impact of peacebuilding in post-conflict societies, focusing on the intentionality, consequences, and responsibility that underline current peacebuilding practices. An examination of the consequences of peacebuilding has largely been ignored by peacebuilding organizations and is insufficiently explored by peace and conflict scholars. The overall argument of this thesis is that liberal peacebuilding is not fit for purpose. Peacebuilding organizations do not engage sufficiently with the spectrum of consequences that their actions produce. They are not capable of reaching intended goals, anticipating and preventing the consequences of their actions, and taking responsibility for their consequences. This makes peacebuilding a camouflaging enterprise. Peacebuilding organizations are preoccupied with immediate impact, are motivated by self-interest, and operate with short-sightedness. However, the very ignorance of the long-term impact and consequences of peacebuilding conditions the failure of peacebuilding efforts in the short term, thereby delaying the consolidation of peace at the expense of prolonging human insecurity and local inertia into structural disadvantages and uncertainty. Accordingly, this thesis highlights an underexplored aspect of peacebuilding practice, and opens up space for peacebuilding critiques to explore new frontiers. It argues that local agency in its institutional, public and everyday forms counts and plays a crucial role in shaping, negotiating, and determining the prospects of peacebuilding. In this regard, the thesis shows that peace is also shaped by dislocated and dissociated events and interactions within and beyond peace infrastructure, as well as being determined by local agents directly and indirectly involved in peacebuilding endeavours. In undertaking this complex task, this thesis develops a new integrated typological framework, which examines the following aspects of peacebuilding: the declared intentions; critical turning points; the spectrum of unintended, unanticipated, and unprevented consequences; and responsibility in the form of attributability, answerability and accountability. To facilitate this process, this thesis introduces ‘critical practice tracing’ as a new qualitative mixed method to guide the identification, examination, and evaluation of peacebuilding intentionality, consequences and responsibility in post-conflict situations. The typological framework is utilized to examine the unintended consequences of police reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the unprevented consequences of the emergence of Serb parallel structures in Kosovo, and the unanticipated consequences of security sector reform in Timor-Leste. To cope with complexity, uncertainty, and to reduce and avoid the potentially negative consequences of peacebuilding, acting and knowing about peace-building should create space for emancipatory, reflective, and precautionary peacebuilding. Accordingly, the main contribution of this thesis is to promote a critical local perspective on peacebuilding, problematize the ethos and agency of peacebuilding and expand critical epistemologies to capture the complexity of con-temporary peacebuilding in post-conflict societies

Neo-functional peace: the European Union way of resolving conflicts

The European Union has expanded its role in preventing conflicts and building peace, but its insti-tutional practices remain insufficiently conceptualized. This article argues that, drawing from astrong self-perception toward a neo-functionalist interpretation of its own history, the EU uses’neo-functio nal peace’ as an approach for resolving protracted disputes, through deconstructinghighly political issues into technical meanings in order to achieve mutually acceptable agreements.This article explores the EU’s efforts to normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia, andexamines the reliance on aspects of neo-functionalism for building peace after protracted disputes.We argue that neo-functional peace has played a crucial role in normalizing political relations andreconciling some of the outstanding disputes between Kosovo and Serbia. Building on this casestudy, we suggest a theoretical concept of neo-functional peace as a useful means to conceptualizethe EU’s peace support practices

Normal Peace: A New Strategic Narrative of Intervention

International actors have used multiple discursive frameworks for justifying interventions, from human security to the responsibility to protect, and, most recently, resilience-building. We argue that the language of normalization, hidden behind these narratives of interventions, has also contributed to structure the intervention landscape, albeit in less obvious and overt ways than other competing narratives of intervention. This article disentangles the different practices of normalization in order to highlight their ramifications. It introduces the concept of normal peace - a new conceptual reference to understand interventions undertaken by the international community to impose, restore or accept normalcy in turbulent societies. The article argues that the optimization of interventions entails selective responses to govern risk and adapt to the transitional international order. The art of what is politically possible underlines the choice of optimal intervention, be that to impose an external order of normalcy, restore the previous order of normalcy, or accept the existing order of normalcy

The international dynamics of counter-peace

Peace processes and international order are interdependent: while the latter provides the normative framework for the former, peacemaking tools and their underlying ideology also maintain international order. They indicate its viability and legitimacy partly by meeting local claims as well as though the maintenance of geopolitical balances. In the emerging multipolar order, the international peace architecture (IPA), dominated by the liberal international order (LIO), is contested through counter-peace processes. These processes contest the nature of the state, state-society relations and increasingly international order itself. This paper investigates the tactics and strategies of regional actors and great powers, where they engage in peace and order related activities or interventions. Given the weakness and inconsistency of the IPA and the LIO, such contestation leads to challenges to international order itself, often at the expense of the claims of social movements and civil society networks