‘If This Was a Normal Situation’: Challenges and Potentials for Deliberative Democratic Peacebuilding in Kosovo's Emerging Governance Networks
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1791 |
| Author | Gemma Van Der Haar,Aogán Delaney,Jan Van Tatenhove |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
‘IF THIS WAS A NORMAL SITUATION’: CHALLENGES AND
POTENTIALS FOR DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRATIC PEACEBUILDING IN
KOSOVO’S EMERGING GOVERNANCE NETWORKS
AOGÁN DELANEY*, GEMMA VAN DER HAAR AND JAN VAN TATENHOVE
Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands
SUMMARY
The link between public administration and conflict resolution is traditionally understood through the ‘democratic peace’thesis,
which holds that war is less likely in democracies than in non-democracies. Limited success with post-conflict democratisation
missions has opened space for renewed research on three strands of ‘deeper democracy’: decentralisation, participation and de-
liberation. This article reports on the study of deliberative democratic practices in emerging governance networks in Prishtina.
Through an investigation of three contentious issues in Prishtina’s public spaces, research combines documentary sources with
field interviews with governance actors to identify factors that enable and constrain the scope for deliberative decision-making in
governance networks. Case studies point to six main influences: ‘securitisation’, trust building, ‘mandate parallelism’, structural
patterns of inclusion and exclusion, network structures and the properties of governed public spaces. In addition, two frames are
found to be particularly resistant to deliberative engagement: Kosovo’s status and ethnic identities. We formulate a tentative
conclusion to be further investigated: in contexts where distrust is high, deliberative governance requires a rigid adherence to
an overarching reference framework that can create discursive space within which relative deliberation can take place. Copyright
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—peacebuilding; network governance; deliberative democracy; ethno-national conflict; democratic peace; Kosovo
INTRODUCTION
Reconstruction of state institutions in post-conflict societies is essential to prevent a renewal of violence
(Brinkerhoff, 2005). This usually takes the form of building democratic institutions or democratising existing
institutions as democratisation is expected to increase the chances of sustaining peace. This policy, known as the
‘liberal peace’or ‘democratic peace’(Paris, 2004), has come under criticism following disappointing results of
peace-building missions and in recognition of the need to look beyond national representative institutions towards
practices of ‘deepening democracy’. This paper examines one path of deeper democracy, deliberation, in Kosovo.
Kosovo can refer to a province within the Republic of Serbia or an independent republic. Both conceptions refer
to a small ethnically mixed region in the south-east of Europe that is emerging from a period of violent conflict.
Once an autonomous province in the Yugoslav Federation, the territory experienced civil war as conflict escalated
between Albanian nationalist paramilitaries and the Yugoslav army under Slobodan Miloševićduring the breakup
of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Fears over a possible genocide against the Kosovo-Albanian majority led to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in 1999 and the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1244
(UNSCR 1244) mandating a UN protectorate and peacebuilding mission led by the UN Administrative Mission in
Kosovo (UNMIK) (Paris, 2004). Nine years after the formal end of the war, during which Kosovo was an interna-
tionally protected province of the Republic of Serbia, in February 2008, members of the Legislative Assembly of
the UNMIK-established Provisional Institutions of Self-government (PISG) declared Kosovo to be an Independent
*Correspondence to: A. Delaney, Disaster Studies Group, Wageningen Universiteit, Wageningen , The Netherlands. E-mail: aogan.
delaney@gmail.com
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 37, 136–152 (2017)
Published online 21 February 2017 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1791
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Republic. This Declaration has met with mixed response, having been recognised by only 111 of the 193 UN mem-
ber states and 23 of the 28 European Union (EU) member states, as of April 2016 (Kosovo Thanks You, n.d.). Even
after Serbia–Kosovo relations have been formally ‘normalised’in the 2013 Brussels Agreement, Serbia still con-
siders the Declaration to be illegal, as do most of the Kosovo Serb minority, creating a de facto partition between
the Serb-majority north of Kosovo and the rest of the country governed by Albanian-majority-controlled institu-
tions (KIPRED, 2009; van der Borgh, 2012).
Theorists argue that deliberatively democratic governance can allow issues to be addressed in a non-
confrontational approach and can facilitate dialogue in a multi-ethnic society where inter-ethnic trust is low (Fung,
2004; McAlister, 2010). Through an analysis of three case studies of governance networks surrounding public
spaces in Prishtina, we look at possibilities for deliberative practices in emerging institutions. Our aim is to improve
deliberative governance in Kosovo through identifying factors that enable or constrain the scope for deliberative
decision-making. Through addressing this research question, we hope to inform current strategies of democratic
peacebuilding, both in Kosovo and in post-conflict states more generally.
In the next section, the literature on democratic peacebuilding is reviewed and the theoretical framework is con-
structed. Research methods and the three case studies are then reported, after which we describe instances in which
enabling and constraining factors influence deliberative governance. We then examine two frames that resist en-
gagement before formulating conclusions.
GOVERNANCE IN POST-CONFLICT INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENTS
Peacebuilding and democratic governance
The link between conflict and governance structures is traditionally understood according to the ‘liberal peace’or
‘democratic peace’thesis (Santiso, 2002; Paris, 2004; Ripsman, 2005; Barakat and Zyck, 2009). This thesis ob-
serves that liberal democracies are less likely to experience wars than are non-democracies. Confidence in this the-
sis has been undermined from three distinct bodies of research: a realist analysis questioning this relationship
(Doyle and Sambanis, 2000; Gleditsch and Ward, 2000; Hegre, 2001; Mansfield and Snyder, 2002; Enterline
and Greig, 2005; Narang and Nelson, 2009); a critical body of research casting transitions as veiled attempts to fur-
ther Western interests (Duffield, 2002; Schwartz, 2005; De La Rey and McKay, 2006; Barakat and Zyck, 2009;
Grubacic, 2012); and a reform-oriented strand responding to the limited success of democratisation missions over
the past 20 years (Paris, 1997, 2004; Bigombe et al., 2000; Pugh and Cobble, 2001; Mansfield and Snyder, 2002;
Brinkerhoff, 2005; Rondinelli and Montgomery, 2005; Barnett, 2006; Hippler, 2008). As a result of this last strand
in particular, the democratic peace strategy has been modified, calling for a period of institutionalisation before full
liberalisation (Mansfield and Snyder, 2002; Paris, 2004, 2010; Rondinelli and Montgomery, 2005).
This shift in emphasis has also renewed debate on what form(s) democratisation should take. Programmes of
‘deeper democracy’are promoted in peacebuilding and elsewhere along three dimensions: decentralisation, partic-
ipation and deliberation (Fung and Wright, 2001; Fung, 2004; McAlister, 2010; Goldfrank, 2011). Decentralisation
of political institutions is hypothesised to reduce ethnic conflict by granting ethnic groups autonomy, either terri-
torially or sectorally, which is hoped will counteract dominance by a majority group (Brancati, 2006; Schneider
and Wiesehomeier, 2008; Gjoni et al., 2010). A distinction can be observed between two strands of participation.
A‘thin’version envisions inclusion of representatives of minority groups in national-level institutions and advo-
cates power-sharing consociationalism in national parliaments and bureaucracies (Esman, 1999; Reynal-Querol,
2005; Sullivan, 2005; Lemarchand, 2007; Lijphart, 2008; Schneider and Wiesehomeier, 2008). A broader concept
focusses on inclusion of minorities themselves, or citizens more generally, and prescribes granting ‘local owner-
ship’of peace through widespread engagement in governance (McAlister, 2010; Paffenholz, 2014; Pishchikova,
2014). Proponents of deliberation argue that rational discussion in open environments can facilitate people to
see conflicts of interest as multifaceted rather than the fault of ‘the other side’(Fung, 2004; McAlister, 2010).
In Kosovo, decentralisation is characterised by the issue of parallel governance institutions in Serb-majority
areas that affiliate towards the state system of Serbia (Gjoni et al., 2010; Heijke, 2010; Heijke et al., 2012),
137
DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRATIC PEACEBUILDING IN KOSOVO
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. 37, 136–152 (2017)
DOI: 10.1002/pad
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