Contesting the rule of law: civil society and legal institutions

This book examines the ambiguous role played by civil society in state-building, democratisation and post-conflict reconstruction in the Western Balkans. In doing so, it challenges the received wisdom that civil society is always a force for good. Civil society actors have helped create the conditions for new, more constructive relations inside and between former Yugoslav countries. But, their agency has also rekindled nationalism hindering efforts to rebuild the region after the conflicts of the 1990s. The book demonstrates that diverse civil society effects cannot be captured without querying both the nature of civil society and the complexity of the ongoing transformation. So how can the emancipatory role of civil society be harnessed? This rigorous case study-driven reappraisal of the ability of civil society to support progressive transformation from an illiberal regime to democracy and from conflict to peace will be a valuable resource to scholars and practitioners alike

Drones at War: The Military Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and International Law

The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the military field has become an issue of increasing concern in the international community. As practice grows (notably, due to the frequent use of such equipment in various countries, either involved or not in armed conflicts), so does case law on its contentious aspects. In this respect, the concept of “border” is of paramount importance, both in its physical meaning (territorial border of the State) and in its legal sense (delimitation of the area where sovereignty is exercised and other States’ intrusion is prevented). Against this background, the Chapter examines the responsibility of the State for cross-border activities, in connection with the use of remotely piloted drones in light of three bodies of international law: the law governing the use of force, in relation to the concept of territorial borders and sovereignty of States; international human rights law, as regards the extraterritorial application of human rights treaties; and international humanitarian law, with particular reference to the law of neutrality and the evolving concept of “battlefield” during an armed conflict

Bureaucratic Representation and Ethnic Bureaucratic Drift

The article combines research on postconflict management with public administration research by presenting a single case study on the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo. To investigate the reasons for the UN mission’s failure to implement its policies on minority relations, the study turns toward local municipal bureaucracies and offers a two-part causal argument that derives from principal–agent theory and bureaucratic representation theory. First, due to a lack of political and administrative oversight by Kosovar institutions and the UN peacebuilding mission, local municipal authorities experienced a high degree of autonomy. Second, those units within municipal administrations that were responsible for minority policy implementation did not include minority bureaucrats who could have acted as their communities’ advocates. In the absence of such active representation and a lack of top-down supervision, the municipal civil service departed from its mandate to implement affirmative policies serving the Serb and Roma community in Kosovo. The article finds that this ethnic bureaucratic drift constitutes a central explanation for the lack of minority policy implementation in Kosovo between 2001 and 2008.publishe