International Norms, Power and the Politics of International Administration

The Kosovo Case

Bibliographic Data

ID3948943
AuthorsAlexandra Gheciu (0000-0002-8868-6515, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume10
Issue1
Pages121-146
Publication date2005-02-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650040590907695
OpenAlexW1986517564
LanguageEN
Citations received13

This article examines the practices of governance enacted within the framework of the international administration of Kosovo, which was established in 1999. I analyse the complex interplay between power and the liberal-democratic norms around which the UN-led mission defined its role in the province. The international administration exercised significant power in the legal/institutional reconstruction of the province, and in its systematic attempts to socialise Kosovars into accepting Western-based norms of liberal democracy as the only reasonable foundation of their polity. At the same time, however, the norms advocated by the international administration proved to be the source of a certain degree of power for the people of Kosovo. Specifically, those norms provided the framework within which Kosovars were able to criticise the international administration, and to claim the right to greater participation in decisions regarding the province. Over the past couple of years, Kosovo has witnessed the emergence of a shared normative framework within which the international administrators and Kosovar political elites articulate often competitive truth claims about the problems of the province, and mobilise different forms of power in support of those claims

Democracy · International relations · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics · Public Administration

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