The Authority–Identity Relation: Symbolic References and Interpretative Authority in Postwar Kosovo

In postwar Kosovo, international and Kosovar political actors claiming authority in the democratization and statebuilding process lacked a long-standing ‘authoritative relation’ with each other and the citizenry. To analyse the structural conditions for the emergence of political authority, the article suggests applying the analytical framework of ‘interpretative authority’, which captures the relational character and simultaneity of authority generation by international and Kosovar actors. Given that Kosovo had unsecured symbolic conditions for authority – no commonly shared symbols of unity for all communities and no commonly agreed interpreter of symbols of unity – political actors were competing intensely for the identity and symbolizations of the ‘new’ Kosovo in their attempts to gain authority in various institutional opportunity structures. The competition over authority and the attempts to denationalize public communications made by the international administration, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), led to the reimbursement of particularistic symbolic references of Kosovar actors, thereby keeping the unsecured symbolic conditions and the weakness of interpretative political authority in Kosovo stable.     

Introduction: Authority Building in International Administered Territories

This introduction to the special section on “Authority Building in International Administered Territories” begins by summarizing the relevant literature on international administrations. To conceptualize authority building as an ongoing process in which international and local actors confirm – or refuse – authority claims, secondly, two types of authority are differentiated: ‘interpretative authority’ and ‘performing authority’. This sociological conceptualization of authority building allows, thirdly, a discussion on the restrictions and challenges that international administrations face in their attempts to establish authority on the ground. Finally, an overview of the section’s articles is provided.     

Security Provision after Regime Change: Local Militias and Political Entities in Post-Qaddafi Tripoli

This paper discusses the way the newly formed political entities and the local militias engage in statebuilding practices during Libya's transitional period of 2011–12. Focusing on the encounters between these actors in the security field, it provides insight into the capacity and strategy of national actors to build state structures and to develop the political arrangements that they deem necessary. It does so by identifying the key actors involved, as well as the interactions between them and the constantly evolving relations of control, power and authority. It shows how actors in the security field engage with each other in their efforts to expand and to institutionalize networks and influence, and the competition and alignments with other security actors that are active in the transitional phase and thereafter.     

Between the Letter and the Spirit: International Statebuilding Subversion Tactics in Burundi

This article explores the appropriation dynamics of international statebuilding in Burundi, with a focus on the period from 2010 to 2015. If international statebuilding is most commonly presented (and debated) as practices leaning towards the achievement of a liberal democracy, this article argues that it can also be used towards undemocratic ends. The central claim is the following: the (most) recent authoritarian trend observed in Burundi’s main political force in government, the National Council for the Defence of Democracy – Forces for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD-FDD), did not only occur against international statebuilding but also through its appropriation and, more specifically, through self-reinforcing subversion tactics of appropriation. The article conceptualizes these tactics, examines the factors of emergence and conditions of existence, and presents the main expressions along three major editorial lines of international statebuilding: pluralist democracy, vibrant civil society and respect of the rule of law.     

The Practice and Theory of US Statebuilding

Abstract

The United States has employed three models of statebuilding over the last century, each animated by a different political theory. Statebuilding 1.0, developed and used from the late 1890s through the end of the Cold War, emphasized building loyal and politically stable subordinate states. Privileging American geopolitical and economic interests over those of local populations, the model was premised on the theory of realpolitik. Statebuilding 2.0 arose under and, in many ways, came to characterize attempts by the United States to construct a New World Order after 1990. The key shift was from seeking loyalty to building legitimate states. Under this model, the United States attempted to build broad-based popular support for nascent states by creating democratic institutions and spearheading economic reforms. In this ‘end of history’ moment, liberalism reigned triumphant in statebuilding practice and theory. Statebuilding 3.0 is now being ‘field-tested’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. This new model seeks to build legitimacy for new states by providing security and essential public services to their populations. It rests on social contract theory, and its core tenet that legitimacy follows from providing effectively for the basic needs of citizens. Successive sections summarize the practice of statebuilding under each model and discuss its implicit political theory. A critique of each model then flows naturally into the practice and logic of the next. The conclusion outlines why a statebuilding 3.1 is necessary, and what such a strategy might entail.     

Security Sector Reform from a Policy Transfer Perspective: A Comparative Study of International Interventions in the Palestinian Territories,Liberia and Timor-Leste

Security sector reform (SSR), targeting security forces and their management and oversight institutions, has become a major feature of international peace- and statebuilding activities. The article draws on policy transfer research to assess substantive and procedural changes in how international actors intervene in the security governance of fragile or post-conflict states. By comparing transfer processes in Liberia, Timor-Leste and the Palestinian Territories, the article shows that despite variations across political, economic and strategic factors in each domestic context, external SSR interventions showed distinct similarities. SSR interventions expanded their substantive scope over time; less directly coercive mechanisms of persuasion and socialization increasingly replaced the direct imposition of external models of security governance; and the influence of domestic elite actors on transfer processes increased over the duration of interventions.     

Moderator or Manipulator? How International–Local Relations Emerged as a Function of UN Authority-Building in Cambodia

The success or failure of international peacebuilding missions is predominantly evaluated in reference to interveners’ ability to exercise their mandated authorities. To test the value of an empirically based analysis of authority-building processes in the course of such missions the article turns to the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC, 1992–1993). In order to safeguard the country’s stability many supported the idea of holding presidential elections in addition to the ones for the Constituent Assembly forming the new government. To organize such unforeseen elections UNTAC would have had to change its mandate as determined by the Paris Peace Accords (PPA). Based on extensive archival research the paper analyses the debate surrounding this proposal as a series of legitimacy claims that were selectively recognized and rejected. The article concludes that evaluations of peacebuilding missions are indeed too focused on interveners’ authority to decide, while neglecting or underestimating challenges to their authority to interpret. This fosters a false sense of control over the direction of political processes.     

Reimagining civil society in conflict: Findings from post-2001 Afghanistan

What is the meaning and role of civil society in Afghanistan? And what contribution could civil society actors make to promoting peace and political reform? Drawing on a research and dialogue project conducted in 2009–2012, this article explores local understandings and practices of civil society in Afghanistan, and examines their relationship to security and social change. It argues that studying civil society can help shed light on the changing dynamics of political authority and security in the country, as well as offer new avenues for promoting progressive change. The article addresses some of the conceptual and analytical limitations of dominant narratives about civil society in conflict-affected environments, demonstrating how they tend to neglect certain forms of agency that have the potential to be transformative.     

Exploring the Effective Authority of International Administrations from the League of Nations to the United Nations

This article analyses the concept of international administration by a multilateral organization through the lens of the effective authority of example missions, arguing that the United Nations Interim Administration of Kosovo (UNMIK) and the United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET) are very specific and distinct attempts at statebuilding. The article’s main argument is that the two most-cited cases in the interwar years – the Saar Territory and the Free City of Danzig, as well as the international administration of West New Guinea by the United Nation (UN) – while presenting interesting parallels with and providing useful insights into the challenges faced by the contemporary international administrations of Kosovo and Timor-Leste, are in fact drastically different endeavours in terms of the effective authority exerted on the ground. The article builds on this special section’s contribution on authority building, analysing the five international administrations through the prism of claimed, recognized, and exercised authority.     

Claiming rights in exile: women’s insurgent citizenship practices in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands

ABSTRACT

This paper examines insurgent citizenship practices employed by activists in the exiled Burmese women’s movement from the 1990s and onwards. Consisting of political exiles, refugees and ethnic insurgents, this movement has successfully used the transnational, transitory space of the borderlands to constitute its participants as political subjects with legitimate claims to rights, citizenship and leadership. Drawing on interviews, this analysis interrogates women’s activism through the lens of insurgent citizenship practices. Thus, how have Burmese women’s activists claimed rights and lived citizenship in exile? Three main strategies are examined: firstly, women activists have positioned themselves as political actors and authorities through involvement in governance and humanitarian aid delivery in refugee camps. Secondly, they have claimed rights and political subjectivity through engagement with international norms, networks and arenas. Thirdly, they have claimed citizenship and political influence in oppositional nation-making projects through engaging with and negotiating ethno-nationalist armed struggles. The analysis highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s insurgent citizenship practices, showing how they navigate multiple marginalized subject positions, direct their rights claims towards multiple governing authorities, and enact multiple political communities.     

Civil Society Capture: Top-Down Interventions from Below?

Driven by the failure of internationally led top-down peacebuilding interventions, international donors have increasingly posited that civil society actors can play a crucial role in peacebuilding and conflict resolution. This has led to a notable increase in the support for civil society in order to integrate local perspectives into peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions over the past decades. Using the case of Cyprus, this paper challenges this premise and argues that this support continues to create homogenized discourses that are not representative of the diversity of local notions of peace. Rather, most types of international support cause civil society actors to adapt their agendas to external priorities, and exclude alternative, less professionalized and critical voices. Local peace actors who resist liberal governmentality have access neither to the monetary support needed to sustain their peace work, nor to international protection for their cause. At the same time, those actors working in line with the international endeavour remove themselves from the ‘everyday’ of local realities so that peace interventions yet again fall into the old trap of top-down interventions.     

Governance Delegation Agreements: Shared Sovereignty as a Substitute for Limited Statehood

Governance delegation agreements—international treaties allowing external actors legal authority within host states for fixed terms—succeed in simple and, under certain conditions, complex state‐building tasks. These deals are well institutionalized and have input legitimacy because ratification requires sufficient domestic support from a ruling coalition. In order to obtain that input legitimacy, however, host states constrain external actors commensurate with their level of statehood: Stronger states delegate less legal authority. This article argues that these constraints, which produce joint rather than complete authority, require external actors to work within state structures rather than substituting for them, and thus make coordination of complex tasks more difficult. A quantitative overview of data on consent‐based peacekeeping missions complements a qualitative analysis focused on comparative case studies in Melanesia and Central America to test the theory. The results support the theory and suggest that these deals hold promise particularly for accomplishing complex tasks in especially weak states.     

Privatization in Kosovo: ‘Liberal Peace’ in Practice

This article examines internationally led privatization in Kosovo as an example of international statebuilding. It concentrates on the period from 1999 to 2008, when privatization was planned and implemented under formal international management. International statebuilding is typically sought justified with the idea of ‘liberal peace’, and this article shows how the tension between the political and economic tenets of the idea of liberal peace manifested itself in Kosovo's internationally led privatization.     

Why International Trusteeship Fails: The Politics of External Authority in Areas of Limited Statehood

International trusteeship is widely touted as a solution to the problem of failed states, an extreme form of limited statehood. Current theories of legitimacy and statebuilding suggest that trusteeships should produce more capable states. These theories, however, fail to take into account the self‐interest and political strategies available to trustees and politicians within new states. We pose a more political model of statebuilding by the international community, the trustee, and national politicians that predicts that trusteeship will fail to produce states with greater capacity. We test for the effects of trusteeship on state capacity, measured by service provision, by creating a matched sample of countries. We find that there is no evidence that states under trusteeship develop greater capacity leading to better provision of public goods than comparable states not under trusteeship. Would‐be statebuilders must be more aware of the political incentives of all parties involved in the process.     

The Use of Statebuilding Research in Fragile Contexts: Evidence from British Policymaking in Afghanistan,Nepal and Sierra Leone

Statebuilding has risen to the forefront of international donor policies toward the security and development of fragile states, with governments now investing millions in statebuilding research every year. However, no serious study has examined the ways in which research influences policy in fragile states. Based on in-depth interviews with officials and researchers, this article begins to shed light on the central dynamics pertaining to research use in such contexts by exploring in some detail the experience of British in-country policymakers in three countries—Afghanistan, Nepal and Sierra Leone. The picture that emerges is a mixed one, with evidence of extensive use of different forms of research combined with worrying practices and lingering deficiencies in some key areas.     

Antipodean Statebuilding: The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands and Australian Intervention in the South Pacific

Abstract

This essay analyses Australian-led statebuilding efforts in Solomon Islands, through the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). RAMSI has often been offered as a successful example of statebuilding worthy of international consideration. Here, some of the limitations of the RAMSI mission and its progress in rebuilding the ‘failed’ South Pacific state will be carefully assessed. Despite significant short-term statebuilding successes in restoring security and stabilizing the economy, RAMSI faces long-term challenges centred on the complex politics of political community-building. As an example of ‘best practice’ statebuilding, RAMSI highlights the complexities involved with the two-level game of international intervention: the (conflicting) challenge of reconciling the need to respect sovereign sensitivities with the need to undertake robust political engagement.     

Bringing the Outside In: Somaliland,Statebuilding and Dual Hybridity

International norms of what it means to be a state dictate domestic policy within developing and unrecognized states but must co-exist with internal demands. With a mutual dependence between internal and external considerations and, indeed, legitimacy, at the fore of Somaliland’s statebuilding project and its stability, it is a useful study in achieving ‘success’ in statebuilding and in what success can mean in bringing together internal and external demands. This article examines the impact of the hybrid inclusion of traditional authority in the central democratic government as the marriage between internal and external demands. This article argues that the Somaliland state is successful because it is a flexible process rather than a project; a process that reflects the demands and expectations of society, an aspect that is often absent in statebuilding projects.     

Mediating between state and citizens: the significance of the informal politics of third-party representation in the global south

This article argues that we should take more seriously the role of intermediaries in relationships between states and citizens in the global south. More specifically it holds that the practice of mediation, the third party representation of citizens to states and vice versa, is a widespread and important political practice in this context. Largely distinct from the contentious politics and popular mobilisation of social movements, mediation is more a politics of negotiation and bargaining by representatives. Developed as an emergent analysis from multiple case studies, mediation is a broad concept that includes practices that at other times might be described as lobbying, clientelism and coercion, but that we conceptualise in terms of claiming legitimacy to speak for the poor and marginalised, and theorise in terms of a democratic deficit between formal political institutions and these groups. In addition to identifying different kinds of mediators, the article categorises mediation in terms of the orientation and nature of various mediatory practices. Lastly, the article identifies at least three explanations for mediation including the endurance of pre-democratic political relations and practices, new forms of social exclusion in post-colonial democracies and the erosion of state authority brought about by neo-liberal policies and globalisation.     

Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Challenging the Property Rights Paradigm in Botswana

Recent work in international studies and comparative politics scrutinizes the relative importance of ideas, interests, and institutions as sources of policy change. A growing body of scholarship identifies ideas as the main causal factors, influencing perceived interests as well as perceived policy options. Others contend that policies can best be understood as products of institutions. Neither explanation can account for both policy choice by politicians and the implementation strategies of administrators. In Botswana, the use of professional criteria for hiring and advancement encourages adherence to international professional norms within the bureaucracy, but electoral competition gives politicians more reason to be attentive to local political concerns. The institutions that define relations of authority among actors with different motivations shape the outcomes of policy choice and implementation. Institutions influence the attentiveness of policy-makers to ideas when making decisions, the degree of attention particular policy-makers give to ideas from particular sources, and the degree of acceptance that ideas must achieve to affect policy. Better evaluations of political development can be achieved through attentiveness to the mix of actors involved in policy decisions, the diversity of institutions and ideas that affect their policy preferences, and the relations of authority that shape their relative influence over policy choice and implementation.     

Credible commitment without independent regulatory agent: Evidence from the Security Council's United Nations Compensation Commission

Credible commitment problems arise whenever decisions made according to short‐term incentives undermine long‐term policy goals. While political actors can credibly commit themselves to their long‐term policy goals by delegating decisions to independent regulatory agencies, the member states of international institutions rarely sacrifice control over regulatory decisions. Against the backdrop of the United Nations Compensation Commission established by the Security Council to settle claims on damage from the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, we present an institutional arrangement that promises to credibly commit member states to their previously defined interests without excluding them from the decision process. It separates the stages of rulemaking and rule application, and is reinforced by conditional agenda‐setting of an advisory body. We probe the theoretical claim with evidence from a unique data set that shows that the Commission settled compensation claims in a remarkably consistent way. The arrangement provides a blueprint for comparable regulatory tasks in many areas of international, European, or domestic politics, in which independent regulation is not feasible.