An Ethnography of “Political Will”: Towards a Thick Description of Internal Scripts in Post-War Kosovo
An Ethnography of “Political Will”: Towards a Thick Description of Internal Scripts in Post-War Kosovo

Summary/Abstract: Abstract. By using “political will” as the framing concept, this article explores what ethno- graphic research can offer to the political sciences and to policy making in understanding op- portunities and failures, including the subversion, obstruction and unintended consequences of post-war state-building processes under international tutelage such as the one in Kosovo. The article challenges the external actors’ assumptions of an absence or “lack of political will” as normative and ethnocentric; indeed a grounded engagement with internal social and po- litical dynamics suggests the existence of a domestic political will that might not conform to international expectations. The article argues that an ethnographic approach to the study of post-conflict state-building is best suited to reveal the, to outsiders, often hidden scripts and signifiers that underpin such an internally relevant and negotiated “political will”. On the basis of the authors’ research the article discusses several examples of the ways in which (and why and to what effect) these internal scripts are reproduced, performed and represented in assertions of this political will among and to, exclusively Albanian, target audiences. Along the way the article describes how such internal communication both intentionally and unin- tentionally eludes international attention and engagement.

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