Imposing legitimacy? The dilemma of international democratic development.

• Author: Vandenbeld, Anita
• Position: Feature Report on Governance

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Introduction

Since the 1999 NATO air-strikes against Serbia because of the ethnic violence in Kosovo, the two million inhabitants of Kosovo have been under United Nations administration. It is one of only two places in the world where the United Nations has actually formed the government, holding final executive and legislative authority. (The other one was the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) from 1999 to 2002.)

After almost eight years of international administration, Kosovo's Provisional Institutions of Self-Governance (PISG) have begun to take on some of the responsibilities of governing. There is a judicial system in place, there is an elected Assembly at the municipal and central levels, and there is a Cabinet led by a Prime Minister and a President. Many of these institutions are supported by international advisors with previous experience in European or North American democracies.

In May 2007, I left my job in the Canadian Parliament and began working as an international advisor to the Independent Oversight Board (IOB), a seven-member Board established to oversee public service appointments, to ensure that people are selected based on merit, and to hear appeals from those who were unjustly fired. In an environment where patronage was the norm (it was not unheard of for a new mayor to fire all the municipal officials and put in place members of his own party), the task of the IOB was daunting. And yet, in most of its cases it has been successful in reversing illegal practices and actually having people reinstated in their jobs.

The purpose of this article is to examine the question of democratic legitimacy using the IOB as an example. How is it that in a society where the international community, with the full force of NATO and the United Nations behind it, has struggled for eight years to create and maintain legitimate democratic institutions in Kosovo with limited success; a small, quasi-judicial, semi-autonomous Board such as the IOB has managed, despite the odds, to establish credibility and compliance with its decisions despite the absence of formal enforcement mechanisms?

Pre-requisites for legitimacy

Institutions are not legitimate simply because they are created or modelled on others that have legitimacy. There are certain preconditions that must be met before institutions can be accepted as legitimate by a local population:

* A legal or constitutional basis for authority

There must be some foundation in law (international or domestic) for the authority held by the body exercising power.

* Enforcement mechanisms

The body exercising power must have some mechanism to enforce its decisions. This need not necessarily be the use of force; it can be any penalty or reward that the body has the capacity to bestow that makes it in the interest of the subjects to comply.

* Impartiality of decision-makers

Those holding power...