Building State Failure in Kosovo?
Building State Failure in Kosovo?

Summary/Abstract: Since the end of the Cold War, the international community has engaged in a number of ambitious interventions in postwar countries with the aim of fundamentally reshaping state-society relations through building new state institutions, restructuring economies and supporting the development of civil society. The notion that international actors are able to build effective and legitimate state institutions in societies recovering from war has led to a proliferation of studies that have explored, both theoretically and empirically, the impact of international state-building. The general consensus in the literature is that the record is not a good one: the few success stories of international state-building have been overshadowed by a laundry list of failures. Explanations of these failures typically range from a mismatch of resources and mission objectives1 and the lack of strategic coherence among international state-builders2 to the deleterious effects of liberal interventions3 and so-called ‘liberal imperialism’.4

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