Environmental governance in a contested state:the influence of European Union and other external actors on energy sector regulation in Kosovo

This article examines environmental governance in Kosovo, with a particular focus on the energy sector. The article considers the degree to which the emerging model of environmental governance is characterised by hierarchical and non-hierarchical modes of coordination. We examine the roles of a number of domestic institutions and actors – ministries, agencies, and regulatory bodies– and the influence of external actors, including the EU, the US, and Serbia. The EU is building Kosovo’s own hierarchical governance capacity by strengthening domestic institutions, whilst the US focuses primarily on market liberalization, whilst simultaneously supporting EU efforts. Moreover, environmental policy change is not wholly or predominantly driven by domestic actors, which can partly be attributed to Kosovo’s limited domestic sovereignty. We conclude that the emerging model of environmental governance in Kosovo is characterized by a weak hierarchy, partly as a result of external actor involvement, which disincentivises the government from responding to domestic non-state actor pressure

The EU’s Involvement in Conflict Prevention – Strategy and Practice.

[From the Introduction]. The European Union is both a pioneer of and a latecomer in conflict prevention. It is a pioneer with regard to advancing the idea of conflict prevention among the European nation states. In fact, the main purpose of the fifty year old unification process in Europe was to bind France and Germany as well as other states of the continent together in order to ensure that they would not go to war again as in the centuries before. By pooling their sovereignty around a supranational core the Member States of the EU decided to entangle their future in commonly agreed rules and institutions and to invite other European states to join the enterprise. The union has grown to fifteen and will witness the accession of ten more members in 2004, increasing the population of the EU to almost half a billion. 2 Thus, European states have turned from a tradition of belligerency and repeated fighting to a culture of co-operation and peaceful conflict resolution among themselves