Everyday legitimacy and international administration: global governance and local legitimacy in Kosovo

International administrations are a very specific form of statebuilding. This paper examines the limits illustrated by the experience in Kosovo. Here, the international administration faced the same requirements of any legitimate, Liberal government, but without the checks and balances normally associated with Liberal governance. Thus, the international administration was granted full authority and the power thereby associated, but without the legitimacy upon which the Liberal social contract rests. The state-building agenda put forth came to be seen as more exogenous, reinforcing the delegitimization process. This paper will specifically address the influence of the Weberian approach to legitimacy on the statebuilding literature, as well as its limits. It will then propose other possible avenues for statebuilding, more in line with a wider understanding of legitimacy and intervention

Inaction and Reaction – Coalition Government and Constitutional Reform in the United Kingdom

Constitutional reform in the United Kingdom is a story frequently framed around the narratives of missed opportunities, executive intransigence and institutional stickiness. Yet in times of flux and uncertainty, matters of the constitution can scale the political agenda at breakneck speed; and as the architecture of the United Kingdom teeters on the precipice of potentially fundamental upheaval, it is crucial to locate recent events within the broader history of constitutional reform in order to tease apart the dynamics of stasis and change. This article responds by offering the first complete in-depth analysis of the 2010–2015 Coalition Government’s record on the constitution, focusing on the gap between rhetoric and reform, and the way in which constitutional traditions have confounded the ability to effectively manage the tensions that exist within the UK’s uneasy settlement. In doing so, the article sets out the institutional and ideational factors that have influenced attitudes towards constitutional reform, in particular focusing on the way in which dilemmas of office have confounded meaningful attempts to alter Britain’s constitutional fabric. It argues that three critical factors together explain the Coalition’s record on the constitution: the clash of constitutional philosophies within the Coalition; the dilemmas with which the Liberal Democrats were confronted in the transition from opposition to government; and, the extent to which the governing norms of constitution effectively neuter attempts to its reform. The findings of this article are therefore salient and significant, providing valuable lessons regarding the tenability of the UK’s extant constitutional architecture and the capacity of the Conservative Government to successfully manage and vent the myriad of pressures upon it