Post conflict reconstruction as development: donors, context and institutions in Kosovo

In June 1999, at the end of the conflict in Kosovo, a large number of international organisations, donors and technical advisers began the task of establishing a new public administration in the territory. The aim of this thesis is to assess the results of this effort more than a decade later and to identify the factors that contributed to its successes and failures. Much of the academic literature on this period in Kosovo discusses the activities of international actors in terms of ‘post conflict reconstruction’ or ‘peacebuilding’, however much of what was done was essentially the same as what these actors do elsewhere under the label of development assistance, involving the same organisations, with the same broad objectives and using the same methods. The thesis thus considers post conflict Kosovo as an example of development assistance and discusses it in terms of the literature, ideas and practices of development assistance. The thesis examines why the major participants in the exercise felt a need to become involved in Kosovo in the way they did, what they expected to achieve, how they tried to achieve it, and how relationships between them affected their work. It then documents the combined impact of their activities on the development of institutions in public finance and civil service management over an extended period, and assesses the extent to which their efforts in these areas can be considered successful, measured against the stated objectives. Although international actors did not succeed in their more ambitious goals, in some fields they have had a positive impact and achieved what they set out to achieve. In other sectors, however, the results have been disappointing and the current Kosovo administration continues to struggle with the consequences of these failures. The thesis considers several factors that may explain these uneven outcomes and argues that the actions of the lead donors, the level of resources applied, and the methods they used were the most important variables in determining outcomes, although the post conflict context, and the nature of the public sector institutions themselves, were also relevant