Contact Person: Jens Narten, Dipl. Sozialwiss.

Postwar Kosovo represents a pristine case study to analyse the dynamics of the interaction between external and local actors of peacebuilding for two reasons. First, it is one of the rare examples of direct transitional administration by a set of international actors comprising the UN, NATO, OSCE, and the EU. Second, its (still) unclear political status in international legal terms contributed to an open, but highly-contested space of political struggle between these international actors and their local counterparts, as exemplified in Kosovo’s recent unilateral declaration of independence.

This PhD projectstudy aims at tracing relevant processes in the peacebuilding interaction between local and international actors in Kosovo since 1999, and hypothesises that the essential dynamics in this interaction are strongly influenced by a discursive struggle between these actors on aspects of local ownership. Moreover, if externally-held powers and capacities are not sufficiently devolved to legitimate local actors in the long run, initial forms of co-operation can rapidly change into increasing mutual confrontation, by which international actors are often forced to agree on a co-optation of the initial peacebuilding agenda.

To test this hypothesis, the study concentrates not only on a technical-instrumental understanding of how to promote local ownership in peacebuilding, but also on how the political struggle of claiming and demanding such ownership unfolds and which turning points are relevant. Taken together, specific patterns and sequences in the peacebuilding dynamics in Kosovo as well as their underlying processes are to be identified, on the basis of which concrete recommendations for future peacebuilding efforts can be generated.

The PhD project was supported by the German Foundation for Peace Research and the IFSH. It started in 2004 and is expected to be concluded in 2009.