Peacebuilding and SSR in Kosovo: an Interactionist perspective

The United Nations (UN) mission in Kosovo was one of the first instances of an international mission that combined governance, peacebuilding and Security Sector Reform. It was unprecedented in its complexity -- comprising militaries, police, international governmental organisations, nongovernmental organisations -- all of whom had to coordinate together in order to reach the democratisation, reconstruction and peacebuilding goals of the mission. The literature on such missions has been primarily top-down, theoretical analysis. There is a dearth of research on the interaction between the external organisations, both at the central level and at the municipal level, and between the external organisations and the local populations. Using previously unpublished interview and participant observation data, it shows how interaction between the external organisations in Kosovo, and between them and the local populations, was a dynamic process. It sheds light on the positions and possibilities of the various actors in a situation that demanded coordination and cooperation in the face of security and peacebuilding challenges.