‘And Everybody Did Whatever They Wanted to Do’: Informal Practices of International Statebuilders in Kosovo

ABSTRACT

Informal practices of local actors in Kosovo have been harshly criticised by international statebuilding actors. However, it would be short sighted to ignore the role of informal practices of international actors in the post-conflict political economy. Working with a qualitative political economy framework, which focuses on the emergence of the socioeconomic post-war order, I argue that we can observe a range of impactful informal practices of international actors in key socio-economic fields. Instead of solely focusing on local informality, we have to trace informal practices of international actors and assess their role in the formation of peace economies.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Elena Stavrevska, Birte Vogel, all participants of the workshop ‘Economies of Peace’ in April 2017 in Marburg, Miriam Tekath, Ronja Schicke, Thorsten Bonacker, Susanne Buckley-Zistel and the reviewers for helpful comments and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Translated from German into English by the author.

2. Translated from German into English by the author.

3. ‘Up to now, however, the state has let people who took over publicly-owned buildings and land to get away with it. The bodies officially responsible for preventing this – initially the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, then the Kosovo Trust Agency, KTA and its successor, the Kosovo Privatization Agency, KPA – have all tolerated such illegal activities, and haven’t taken any measures to sanction them’ (Prebeza 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: [Grant Number TRR 138/1-2014].

Notes on contributors

Werner Distler

Werner Distler is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Conflict Studies in Marburg. His research focuses on knowledge and intervention, intervention as a social practice, authority building after conflict, and the role of discourses and practices of securitization in statebuilding.