Democratisation through Defiance? The Albanian Civil Organisation ‘Self-Determination’ and International Supervision in Kosovo

Abstract

It has long been suggested that civil society, at least in those cases where its underlying ideas and structures are imported into a given country, may be of limited impact in producing an active citizenry that would counteract authoritarian regimes and allow the building of social capital beyond traditional family structures.¹ In Kosovo, as elsewhere in the wider region,² such an importation has occurred. NGOs have mushroomed after the war in 1999,³ responding to UN democratisation policies and Western donor-driven priorities underpinned by universalist paradigms of civil society. According to critical observations, this process has resulted in the production of a bureaucratic and elitist ‘project culture’ detached from locally rooted concerns, aspirations and identifications.⁴ According to social anthropologist, Steven Sampson, this imported culture features its own unique structures, activities and jargon, lifting its privileged local employees away from the rest of society.⁵ Given wider debates within social anthropology about cultural imperialism, local practices of subversion and resistance to universalist importations and political agency of those marginalised by such processes,⁶ the focus must shift to home-grown initiatives and its cultural resources.