ABSTRACT
Kosovo is the most controversial case of statebuilding in contemporary Europe and the question of recognition continues to divide the EU as well as UN member states. NATO’s intervention in 1999, which paved the way for it, was itself the most controversial in the organization’s postCold War history. As it has divided states, so has it divided scholars. The controversial issue around Kosovo’s status came from the outset to shape the character of international administration and statebuilding efforts in Kosovo, and an analysis of these must be placed within the context of this protracted conflict. Moreover, as argued elsewhere (Sörensen, 2012), international statebuilding measures are profoundly conditioned by local structures and agents with which they interact, and the relative relations of power and legitimacy within competing local elite formations, in relation to which they have to form allies, contest, and compete. Thereby the local-domestic political dynamic prior to intervention, and how this is affected by intervention, is central to the analysis. In Kosovo the most crucial issue aside from evolving Serbian-Albanian relations has been the intra-Albanian competition between the moderate (and initially hegemonic) political party LDK (Democratic Alliance of Kosovo) and the radical faction KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), with its gradual consolidation during the second half of the 1990s and, especially, how the latter attained international support both intentionally and unintentionally. This process, primarily shaped in the 1990s, came to profoundly influence the nature and direction of statebuilding after 2000. Here, institution-building has also to a large extent been developed upon structures shaped during the 1990s.
