Werner Distler

Intervention as a social practice: knowledge formation and transfer in the everyday of police missions

ABSTRACT The problematic nature of biased knowledge held by professionalized experts and aid workers in statebuilding is already recognized. Yet we still lack understanding on knowledge formation and transfer in the everyday of statebuilding operations. I argue that the actors on the ground gain their knowledge in powerful and self-referential socialization processes. The aim of this article is to reconstruct via an interactionist theoretical framework, how German police officers, deployed for a maximum of 12 months, perceive and interpret other actors and their mission in Kosovo, how they gain this knowledge and how it relates to their work. I draw two conclusions: first, the police officers, both experienced and newcomers, share mostly negative attitudes towards local actors and the mission. Second, the most important mode of knowledge formation and transfer behind these similar attitudes is the informal interaction with experienced interveners and local actors, not official trainings or information. These informal modes of knowledge transfer have a limiting effect on the practice of statebuilding. New knowledge is difficult to gain in short-term deployment, instead stereotypes are reaffirmed. Interveners are not independent units and the social practice of an operation cannot simply be planned; it develops on the ground in specific forms.

Die Bedingungen der Intervention: Interaktion in einer Ausnahmesituation

Eine internationale Intervention in eine Gesellschaft bedeutet in erster Linie das Aufeinandertreffen von internen und externen Akteuren im Alltag, die sich gegenseitig unbekannt und fremd sind. Die verschiedenen Akteure mussen ihre gewohnten und aus der Routine entstandenen Verhaltensweisen unter den Bedingungen und Gegebenheiten einer Intervention, die eine Ausnahmesituation ist, modifizieren. Neue und gemeinsam durch Interaktion konstruierte Verhaltensweisen entstehen und werden die Grundlage des Handelns. Die Interaktion definiert also die Beschaffenheit, Moglichkeiten und Grenzen der so konstituierten Interventionsgesellschaft. Diese Interaktion ist fur externe wie interne Akteure gleichermasen eine Herausforderung.

Authority in statebuilding as communicative practice. The Joint Working Group on the Constitutional Framework in Kosovo

ABSTRACT Post-war constitution-making touches the future identity of the concerned society. In externally led democratization, it can turn into a challenging negotiation process between international and so-called local actors. But who can claim the authority to define and interpret identity and fundamental norms of society, and on what grounds? Based on an analysis of the “Joint Working Group on the Constitutional Framework” held in spring 2001 in Kosovo, the article argues that external actors have a structural disadvantage in the authoritative communication with local actors, even if equipped with a strong international mandate. While external actors can set the opportunity structures to negotiate constitutional politics, local actors will use every chance to publically claim authority on their behalf in the process. Guided by the theoretical framework of interpretative authority (Deutungsmacht), the article concludes that we have to understand authority in statebuilding primarily, not as an attribute of actors, but as an outcome of communicative practices.

Die andere Seite der Medaille: Intervention und Widerstand in Bosnien-Herzegowina und im Kosovo

Interventionen wollen Friedensprozesse, Staatsaufbau und Demokratisierung voranbringen. Die intervenierten Gesellschaften sehen sich jedoch dabei mit den Gestaltungsansprüchen der Intervenierenden konfrontiert. Diese sind der intervenierten Bevölkerung gegenüber weder demokratisch legitimiert, noch unterliegen sie einer Rechenschaftspflicht. Auch institutionalisierte Kanäle zur politischen Konfliktaustragung fehlen. Stattdessen wird Widerstand als Spoilertum delegitimiert. Für uns wird politischer Widerstand deshalb eine erwartbare Folge andauernder Interventionen – die andere Seite der Medaille. Anhand der Partei Savez Nezavisnih Socijaldemokrata aus Bosnien und der Bewegung VETËVENDOSJE! im Kosovo zeigen wir, wie stark sich beide Organisationen als Träger des Widerstands gegen die Interventionen verstehen und sich nur unter deren spezifischen Bedingungen entwickeln konnten. Anstatt Widerstand generell zu delegitimieren und den engen Zusammenhang zwischen Intervention und den aus ihr entstehenden Konflikten zu ignorieren, müssen wir Interventionen deshalb verstärkt als politische Prozesse verstehen, die politische Formen der Konfliktregelung zwischen Intervenierenden und Intervenierten nötig machen.

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

ABSTRACT 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.

Economies of peace: Economy formation processes and outcomes in conflict-affected societies

Looking beyond and beneath the macro level, this special issue is interested in the processes and outcomes of the interaction of economic reforms, socio-economic peacebuilding programmes and international interventions with people’s lived realities. Despite decades of international involvement, many of the debates about peacebuilding and conflict prevention are still detached from the basic livelihoods and everyday concerns of citizens in conflict-affected societies. While the formerly strict distinction between conflict-related and development efforts has been problematised and rethought in recent decades (Duffield 2007, Mac Ginty and Williams 2009), the (socio-)economic aspects of peace formation still remain on the margins of the discussion. For instance, the 2016 report of the joint United Nations Development Programme/Department of Political Affairs Programme on Building National Capacities for Conflict Prevention barely mentions economic aspects of peace, entirely omitting any mention of the word ‘economy’ (UNDP 2017). This is puzzling considering the strong focus of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development on socioeconomic matters, including poverty, hunger, decent work, economic growth, reduced inequalities and their intersection with peace and justice. This special issue begins to fill this research gap. We argue that disregarding socio-economic aspects of peace and how they relate to people’s everyday lives leaves a vacuum in our understanding of peace, particularly a just and sustainable peace, and the formation of post-conflict economies. We define ‘postconflict economy formation’ as a multifaceted phenomenon, including both formal and informal processes that occur in the post-conflict period and contribute to the introduction, adjustment or abolition of economic practices, institutions and rules that inform the transformation of the socio-economic fabric of the society. It is influenced by socio-economic legacies from before

Securitisation and Desecuritisation of Violence in Trusteeship Statebuilding

ABSTRACT The United Nations has engaged in (neo)trusteeship statebuilding in two different contexts: post-Second World War decolonisation and after the Cold War. On both occasions, statebuilding aimed at preventing organised, large-scale violence. Nevertheless, these statebuilding efforts were confronted by several forms of violence, ranging from civil war to a high level of politically motivated violence. In this article, we ask how and why administrations in French Cameroon, New Guinea, Kosovo and Timor-Leste implementing (de)securitised such violence – by addressing it as a serious threat and imple-menting policies of protection, by portraying it as something manageable or even by ignoring it.

‘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.

Dangerised youth: the politics of security and development in Timor-Leste

Abstract International organisations, the national government and civil society alike have identified youth as a potential threat to the stability of the young state of Timor-Leste over the last decade. In this article, I ask how these actors define the danger of youth and what reasons they identify for the potential threat of young citizens for the society and state. Guided by a theoretical framework of Critical Security and Development Studies, I argue that while political manipulation as reason for youth violence was a prominent part of the security discourse in the years after the crisis in 2006, the discourse on the danger of youth in very recent international and national documents has been depoliticised. Despite decreasing numbers of youth-related violence, the threat construction has not vanished; rather, the language on youth has been adapted to the existing international discourse on violent youth as a threat to successful development. In this way, international and national actors have sustained the image of a society in need of management.

Das Militär im Statebuilding aus interventionssoziologischer Perspektive

Die Diskussion im Jahre 2010 uber die endgultige Transformation der deutschen Bundeswehr in eine Einsatzarmee (Strukturkommission der Bundeswehr 2010) unterstreicht die gegenwartige Bedeutung militarischen Handelns in internationalen Interventionen. Die Transformation deutscher Streitkrafte, und damit auch die Anpassung an die Strukturen anderer interventionsorientierter Streitkrafte (z. B. USA, GB), ist Folge des „New Interventionism“ (Doyle/Sambanis 2006: 6). Zerfallene oder fragile Staaten, die nicht in der Lage sind, Konflikte zu verhindern, zu regeln oder zu losen, haben eine Redefinition und Erweiterung des Konzepts von Souveranitat in den internationalen Beziehungen eingeleitet, die Interventionen erleichtert. Gerade die normative Dimension der Diskussion uber Interventionen, also eine neue Verantwortung der internationalen Gemeinschaft fur Gesellschaften und Individuen in gescheiterten oder vom Krieg weitgehend zerstorten Staaten, hatte zur Folge, dass aus militarischen Interventionshandlungen anhaltende, fortgefuhrte Interventionen entstanden, die den Rahmen traditioneller Peacekeeping-Missionen sprengten und neue, ambitionierte Ziele formulierten: Begriffe wie Peacebuilding, Nationbuilding und Statebuilding sind Synonyme fur diese fortgesetzten Interventionshandlungen geworden.