ABSTRACT
On June 10, 1999 the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1244 establishing the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) to govern Serbia’s southern province in the aftermath of NATO’s 78 day air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Savezna republika Jugoslavija, SRJ). Resolution 1244 called for the creation of “…an international civilian presence in Kosovo in order to provide an interim administration for Kosovo under which the people of Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…,” (1999: 3) and transformed Kosovo into the only case study that pertains to a territory which lacks international legal recognition as a state.1 Krasner notes:
Kosovo, therefore, confronts the student of compliance with a territory which remained de jure part of the SRJ but under the sovereign control of UNMIK. The assumption that states are the subjects of international legal obligations constitutes an a priori assumption behind rationalist theories of compliance grounded in neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. After all, neorealists construct compliance as a reflection of the distribution of state power, while neo-liberal institutionalists construct compliance as a reflection of state interest. Remove the state as the subject of international legal obligations and the explanatory power of existing rationalist approaches to IR evaporates. The absence of a state actor makes Kosovo fundamentally different from the preceding Bosnian case study.
