Description
Preliminary research shows that in the majority of independence-seeking territories where international organisations engaged with statebuilding activities there was also titular recognition, i.e. a recognition that the group in question has a right to state independence. This paper uses congruence analysis in the case study of post-1999 international statebuilding in Kosovo to explore this question. The study of Kosovo confirms the hypothesis but also offers two further interesting findings: first, a recognition of a right to statehood might co-exist with the support of other alternatives ways to solve a dispute (e.g. autonomy within a different state). Secondly, the relationship between titular recognition and statebuilding is more dialectic and less linear: as institutions developed and were given to Kosovars, demands for independence grew, which seems to have left less room to international organisations to support other options for resolving the dispute with Serbia. In this regard, the paper makes a manifold contribution: First, the paper explores the role of international organisations in recognition, which has been neglected within a state-centric literature. Secondly, analysis moves away from binary understandings of recognition by exploring titular recognition as a different type of recognition somewhere in between the two extremes of non-recognition and recognition that have attracted most research attention. Thirdly and most importantly, the paper cross-fertilises the topics of recognition and statebuilding, therefore helping understand better their interrelation.
