ABSTRACT
How did politicians and others come to legitimize intervention in Kosovo and non-intervention in Algeria? How could the content of state sovereignty emerge as something to be defined by Algeria itself, whereas the competencies and boundaries of Yugoslavian sovereignty appeared to be a matter of international consensus and commonly held norms? How could gross violations of human rights, extrajudicial killings and massacres be portrayed as a clear foundation for international involvement in terms of Kosovo and not in Algeria? Before engaging with these comparative questions, it might be useful to recapture some of the arguments regarding the limits and possibilities of comparative analysis within a context of discourse analysis.
