The Prelude to the Elections: Power-sharing and the Failure of the Multiethnic Project

Abstract

In this chapter I describe how the effort by the international administration to achieve their twin objectives of keeping Kosova within Serbia and building a society based on civic nationalism in a multiethnic non-sovereign entity in Kosova came to nothing and failed. Instead of a multiethnic, individualistic, democratic, and open society, the UNMIK created a democratic, but a segregated, society. The main reason for this failure is the opposition of the ethnies led by the indigenous élites to the project. Throughout the process of the UNMIK-led institutional-building, the Serbs and the Albanians were guided in their actions by their respective security syntheses. Their fixed, common collective obsession is with each other, as the other represents the unchanging deadly security threat in their security syntheses.