Abstract:
This study analyses the question of whether international peacebuilding efforts in weak, failed or failing states via United Nations Transitional Administrations (UN TAs) are successful. As successful are deemed those transitional administrations that manage to hand over power to the local population and achieve local ownership. By comparing the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK, 1999- ) with the United Nations Transitional Administration Mission in East Timor (UNTAET, 1999 – 2002), it is proposed that TAs tend to be more successful, when conflicting ethnic interests are low, when there are higher levels of local participation in the transitional structures and when more benchmarks (as stipulated by the international peacebuilders) are achieved. The success of a transitional administration is thus, seen as an interplay between local (micro), national (meso) and international (macro) factors, which together determine the Space for Local Ownership of Peacebuilding (SLOP). A higher SLOP signifies a more successful TA. On a theoretical level of analysis an attempt is made to bridge apolitical approaches to peacebuilding, professing social engineering, with political approaches to peacebuilding, advocating change from within. On an empirical-analytical level of analysis it is viewed that the proposed model of SLOP appropriately reflects the dynamics and challenges of current peacebuilding efforts in failed states.