Building Stable and Effective States Through International Governance: the Politics of Technocratic Interventions

BUILDING STABLE AND EFFECTIVE STATES THROUGH INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE: THE POLITICS OF TECHNOCRATIC INTERVENTIONS A dissertation presented by Joseph B. Coelho to The Department of Political Science In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the field of International Affairs and Public Policy Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts October, 2008 1 © 2008 Joseph B. Coelho ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2 BUILDING STABLE AND EFFECTIVE STATES THROUGH INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE: THE POLITICS OF TECHNOCRATIC INTERVENTIONS by Joseph B. Coelho ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Affairs and Public Policy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Northeastern University, October 2008 3 ABSTRACT Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations and Western states have responded to severe internal crises of conflict-ridden territories by intervening and directly managing their internal affairs with the purported aim of strengthening state capacity. In some instances, external actors have even developed the institutions of government, while exercising the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of the modern state. This study explores the dominant assumptions that underlie the developmental strategies of the international administrations in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. I argue that these interventions tend to view state-building as a technical process that can ignore local politics and bypass the important role of consensus building in the formation of state institutions. The study shows that this technocratic view of state-building is a corollary of how Western powers have reinterpreted the institution of sovereignty from a formal-legal right to one in which non-Western states have an ethical responsibility to provide certain normative standards of good governance to their citizens in order to be recognized as legitimate sovereign authorities. Sovereignty as responsibility thus provides a certain blueprint for international policymakers involved in administering and rebuilding war-torn societies. The study finds that while international led state-building aims to rebuild stable and effective independent states, such regulatory and invasive policies are more likely to produce weak state institutions that lack local legitimacy, or at the very least, are highly dependent upon international support for their continued existence. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many people, all of whom I cannot possibly acknowledge here. However, I would like to thank a select few directly. First, I would like to thank the members of my committee: Professor David Schmitt, Professor Amilcar Barreto, and Professor William Crotty. In particular, I have benefited greatly from the intellectual generosity and patience of Professor David Schmitt, who has been an endless source of support and encouragement; I could not have asked for a better adviser. I would also like to thank Mario Vuksan for helping me with my field research. He provided me an inspiring and supportive environment, which allowed me to meet wonderful and intriguing people, including Adnan Rudanovic, producer of the Bosnian-American TV in New York, and Indria Kajosevic, co-founder of RACCOON, an NGO that deals with refugee affairs in Bosnia. Numerous UN officials in New York generously shared their insights into the inner workings of international administrations and state-building missions. My colleagues at Northeastern, particularly Jason Devine and Peter Richardson, who provided me a life line over the past six years and kept my sanity in check during long hours of studying and conversation. Finally, none of this would have been possible without the support of my friends and family. I want to thank Patti for her patience, sacrifice, love, and sense of humor throughout this process. She spent countless hours editing my chapters and helping me create tables and figures. And to my parents, whose love and sacrifice has made it possible for me to pursue a path of intellectual curiosity. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 4 Acknowledgements 5 Table of Contents 6 List of Tables 7 List of Figures 8 List of Abbreviations 9 Introduction 12 Chapter 1. Understanding International Administration and 39 State-Building Chapter 2. The Role of Contextual Factors 89 Chapter 3. Introduction to the Case Studies: Bosnia, Kosovo, 145 and East Timor Chapter 4. The Dual Mandate (I): Serving the Role of Government 227 Chapter 5. The Dual Mandate (II): Building Empirical Statehood? 295 Conclusion 387 References 416 6 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Contextual Factors: Key Internal and External Factors Table 3.1 The Powers and Functions of International Administrations Table 5.1 Observed Impact of International Led State-Building in the Areas of Coercive Authority Table 5.2 Economic and Human Welfare Data, 2006 (Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor) 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 The Conceptual Distinction of State-Building Figure 2.1 Context as Barrier 8 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BiH Bosnia and Herzegovina CEP Community Empowerment Project CIMIC Civil-Military Cooperation CIVPOL Civilian Police CNRT National Council of Timorese Resistance DPA Department of Political Affairs DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations ETDF East Timor Defense Force ETTA East Timor Transitional Administration Falintil Armed Forces for the National Liberation of East Timor FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) HR High Representative IAC Interim Administrative Council ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia IDPs Internally displace persons IFOR Implementation Force IMF International Monetary Fund INTERFET International Force in East Timor IPTF International Police Task Force JAM Joint Assessment Mission JIC Joint Implementation Committee 9 JIAS Joint Interim Administrative Structure KFOR Kosovo Force KLA Kosovo Liberation Army KPC Kosovo Protection Corps KPS Kosovo Police Service KTA Kosovo Trust Agency KTC Kosovo Transitional Council MSU Multinational Specialized Unit NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NC National Council NCC National Consultative Council NGO Non-governmental organization OCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OHR Office of the High Representative OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe PIC Peace Implementation Council PISG Provisional Institutions of Self-Government PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team RRTF Reconstruction and Return Task Force RS Republika Srpska SAA Stabilization and Association Agreement SAp Stabilization and Association process SFOR Stabilization Force 10 SOE Socially owned enterprise SRSG Special Representative of the Secretary-General TA Transitional administrator TFET Trust Fund for East Timor TPF Transitional Police Force UNAMET United Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor UNDP United Nations Development Program UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNMIBH United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina UNMIK United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo UNMISET United Nations Mission in Support of East Timor UNTAC United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia UNTAES United Nations Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium UNTAET United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor UNTEA United Nations Temporary Executive Authority 11 INTRODUCTION Domestic transitions from war to peace have increasingly taken on an invasive international dimension. International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) have demonstrated an increased willingness during the latter part of the 1990s and onwards to intervene and manage the domestic affairs of conflict-ridden states with the aim of rebuilding their institutions. 1 Perhaps more intriguing is the fact that international organizations have developed the institutions of government by assuming quasi-sovereign authority and exercising political administration over post- conflict societies on a temporary basis. What is often referred to in the literature as an international administration, international organizations via their special representatives have in some instances wielded considerable political authority over domestic arrangements, including the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of the modern state. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the recent international administrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2, Kosovo, and East Timor, where international organizations exercised unprecedented domestic political authority. Indeed, these missions represent the pinnacle of international intervention and the extent to which international organizations have become more regulatory and invasive in their developmental approaches in war-torn societies. The state-building activities of international administrations in the 1990s and the more recent U.S.-led state-building projects in Afghanistan and Iraq have sparked a debate among scholars and practitioners about whether the international community 1 Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21 st Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004): p. ix. 2 For the sake of simplicity, I will hereinafter refer to Bosnia and Herzegovina as ‘Bosnia’. 12 should assume a more intrusive role in addressing civil conflicts, humanitarian catastrophes, and incidents of state failure. 3 On one side of the debate are those scholars

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