Acting Like a State: Kosovo and the Everyday Making of Statehood

“This timely study captures the discourse and practice of Kosovo’s foreign policy during its critical first decade of independent statehood. Gëzim Visoka’s detailed and insightful analysis offers a masterful account of the contemporary challenges facing new states in the international system.” – Enver Hoxhaj, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kosovo “In this engaging and timely book Gëzim Visoka shines much needed new light on the contested process of international recognition. Through an empirically rich analysis of Kosovo’s diplomatic discourses, practices and entanglements, Visoka addresses crucial questions around how emerging states seek to carve out a meaningful existence within contemporary world politics. He does so by developing a conceptually nuanced and insightful perspective that turns critical attention to the everyday construction of sovereignty and statehood, the oft-neglected role of diplomatic agency, and how political legitimacy is fostered by the actions of contested states.” – Fiona McConnell, University of Oxford “Visoka musters insights from Social Anthropology and International Relations to lay bare the myriad of practices that informed Kosovo’s diplomatic strategy to act like a state and join the international community. Generalisable insights are on ample display.” – Iver B. Neumann, Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) “In this important and innovative book, Gëzim Visoka explores the everyday politics of constructing independent statehood and obtaining international recognition. The rich empirical analysis of Kosovo’s diplomatic efforts shows convincingly that such agency matters: international recognition does not simply depend on international norms or great power politics. The book makes an original and significant contribution to the existing literature and is a must-read for anyone interested in state recognition.” – Nina Caspersen, University of York Acting Like a State How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership in international organisations in contemporary world politics? This book provides the first in-depth study of Kosovo’s diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership in international organisations. Analysing the everyday diplomatic discourses, performances, and entanglements, this book contends that state-becoming is not wholly determined by systemic factors, normative institutions, or the preferences of great powers; the diplomatic agency of the fledgling state plays a far more important role than is generally acknowledged. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, this book argues that Kosovo’s diplomatic success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions, and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations, and events. Accordingly, this book contributes to expanding our understanding of the everyday diplomatic agency of emerging states and the changing norms, politics, and practices regarding the diplomatic recognition of states and their admission to international society. Gëzim Visoka is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Dublin City University, Ireland. He is author of several books and numerous journal articles on international intervention, peacebuilding, foreign policy, and state recognition. Interventions Edited by Jenny Edkins Aberystwyth University Nick Vaughan-Williams University of Warwick The Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and global politics. In our first 5 years we have published 60 volumes. We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important topics. Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociology, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical and textual studies in international politics. We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted directly to the Series Editors: • • Jenny Edkins (jennyedkins@hotmail.com) and Nick Vaughan-Williams (N.Vaughan-Williams@Warwick.ac.uk). “As Michel Foucault has famously stated, ‘knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting’ In this spirit The Edkins – Vaughan-Williams Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge mainstream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to contribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and affirm the world recycled in IR’s traditional geopolitical imaginary.” Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA Acting Like a State Kosovo and the Everyday Making of Statehood Gëzim Visoka On the Persistence of the Japanese ‘History Problem’ Historicism and the International Politics of History Hitomi Koyama Ontological Entanglements, Agency and Ethics in International Relations Exploring the Crossroads Laura Zanotti For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/series/INT Acting Like a State Kosovo and the Everyday Making of Statehood Gëzim Visoka First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Gëzim Visoka The right of Gëzim Visoka to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-28533-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-26905-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC To my daughter Eira Contents List of figure, map, and tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations x xi xii 1 Becoming a sovereign state 1 2 The everyday making of statehood 23 3 Crafting statehood 53 4 Writing sovereignty 91 5 Performing sovereignty 123 6 Entangling sovereignty 161 7 The price of statehood 198 Appendices Index 217 235 Figure, map, and tables Figure 1.1 Recognition of Kosovo (2008–2017) 8 Map 1.1 Map of states that have recognised Kosovo’s independence by 2017 5 Tables 3.1 Kosovo’s foreign policy priorities (2008–2017) 5.1 The process of diplomatic recognition 5.2 Kosovo’s differentiated narrative for attracting diplomatic recognition 5.3 Kosovo’s membership in international organisations (2008–2017) 6.1 Countries with secessionist regions/movements withholding recognition of Kosovo (2008–2017) 80 127 137 145 178 Acknowledgements This book grew out of the time I spent with Kosovo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2013 and 2014, where I closely experienced and observed the everyday making of Kosovo’s statehood, a process that involved writing, performing, and entangling state sovereignty. Hence, I am in debt to the many diplomats and civil servants, who devoted themselves to implementing Kosovo’s foreign policy as part of an enormous process of statebuilding under the conditions of external contestation. In particular, former Foreign Minister of Kosovo, Enver Hoxhaj, deserves special recognition for sharing his experience of leading Kosovo’s foreign affairs between 2011 and 2017, which was essential for understanding Kosovo’s diplomatic discourses, performances, and entanglements. Special thanks to Muhamet Brajshori who remains an unsung hero of Kosovo’s everyday struggle for recognition and membership in international organisations. I am grateful to the Assembly of Kosovo for permitting me to access their archives. I am also in debt to Bashmir Xhemaj, Besart Lumi, Dani Ilazi, Edward Newman, Oliver P. Richmond, Sandra Pogodda, Annika Björkdahl, Nina Caspersen, Roger Mac Ginty, Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Lulzim Pllana, Albert Prenkaj, Nora Weller, Lendita Haxhitasim, Dafina Buçaj, Mimoza Ahmetaj, Ilir Dugolli, Pëllumb Kallaba, Zana Zeqiri-Rudi, Heroina Telaku, Sylë Ukshini, Edona Peci, Leonora Kryeziu, and to many others who cannot be listed here, for their support while I was undertaking the research necessary to write this book. At Dublin City University, I remain grateful to my colleagues John Doyle, Eileen Connolly, Gary Murphy, Ken McDonagh, Walt Kilroy, Iain McMenamin, and Eugene McNulty for their support while I completed this book. The financial support provided by DCU’s Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction (IICRR) and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences is greatly appreciated. Finally, I am most grateful to my wife Grace Bolton-Visoka for her forbearance while I finalised this book, which coincided with the arrival of our daughter Eira, to whom I dedicate this book. Abbreviations ASEAN AU CARICOM CEB CEFTA CoE EBRD ECOWAS EU EULEX FIFA GCC ICJ ICO IMF INTERPOL IOC KFOR KLA LDK LVV MARRI MFA NATO OAS OIC OIF OSCE PCA PDK PISG RCC RYCO Association of Southeast Asian Nations African Union Caribbean Community Council of Europe Development Bank Central European Free Trade Agreement Council of Europe European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Economic Community of West African States European Union European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo International Federation of Football Associations Gulf Cooperation Council International Court of Justice International Civilian Office International Monetary Fund International Criminal Police Organization International Olympic Committee Kosovo Force (NATO) Kosovo Liberation Army Lidhja Demokratike e Kosovës (Democratic League of Kosovo) Lëvizja Vetëvendosje! (Movement for Self-Determination) Migration, Asylum and Refugees Regional Initiative Ministry of Foreign Affairs North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Organisation of American States Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Organisation of Francophonie Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Permanent Court of Arbitration Partia Demokratike e Kosovës (Democratic Party of Kosovo) Provisional Institutions of Self-Government Regional Cooperation Council Regional Youth Cooperation Office of the Western Balkans Abbreviations xiii SAA SADC SEECP U.S. UDI UEFA UK UN UNESCO UNGA UNMIK UNSC WB WB6 WCO WHO Stabilisation and Association Agreement (European Union) Southern African Development Community South-East Europe Cooperation Process United States of America Unilateral Declaration of Independence Union of European Football Associations United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland United Nations Organisation United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UN General Assembly UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo UN Security Council World Bank Western Balkans 6 World Customs Organisations World Health Organisation 1 Becoming a sovereign state The puzzle Sovereign statehood and self-determination of peoples remain among the most problematic, yet important aspects of global politics. Between 1816 and 2011, over 400 distinct groups have demanded independence (Griffiths 2016: 5). However, only a very small fraction of ethnic groups seeking independence manage to become sovereign and recognised states. The twentieth century saw the birth of over 150 new states that emerged as a result of tectonic changes in world politics caused by major world wars; the decolonisation process; the dissolution of large federal states; and protracted ethnic and civil wars (Coggins 2014: 5–7; Walter 2009; Fearon and Laitin 2003). At the dawn of the twenty-first century, it became clear that “quests for self-determination around the world are likely to be among the most important factors driving international politics in the next decades” (Callahan 2002: 2). Despite this sudden increase in the number of recognised states, there are still no universally acceptable criteria clarifying who has the right to independent statehood and under what circumstances a distinct group can proclaim independence. Historically, political disintegration and the emergence of new states has been met with considerable resistance because any attempt to redraw the cartography of states not only affects territorial integrity of existing states but can also reshape global order (Hofbauer 2016). Consequently, “for every case of successful secession there are many where claims to selfdetermination are thwarted by the resolute upholding of the principle of territorial integrity” (McConnell 2016: 20). The hostile response to claims for independent statehood has led to the creation of new states attracting different degrees of international recognition, which are often excluded from global politics, institutions, norms, and laws, and they are exposed to external interference and various forms of dependency. How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership in international organisations? Recognition and membership in international organisations – the final stage before a state enters in the club of sovereign states – has been widely debated in international relations, international law, and area studies. While there is no scholarly consensus on the determinants behind the success of secession and diplomatic recognition, existing debates on how 2 Becoming a sovereign state independent sovereign statehood is achieved generally rest upon systemic factors, normative institutions, and the preferences of great powers. When weighting the major factors and dynamics behind state recognition, a group of scholars place strong emphasis on the support of great powers (Coggins 2014; Sterio 2013). While the support of great powers and collective recognition are identified as international determinants of the acceptance of an emerging state, at the domestic level administrative and territorial autonomy are considered optimal determinants of secession (Pavković and Radan 2011). Others affiliate the desire for independent statehood and the proliferation of new states with changing international norms, which discredit colonial conquest and the use of violence by the host state to prevent secession (Fazal and Griffiths 2014). International lawyers engage in never-ending polemics on the criteria of statehood, the declaratory or constitutive role of recognition, and the consequences of state emergence for international law, political order, and international stability (Lauterpacht 1947; Crawford 2007; Hofbauer 2016). International studies scholars consider the consent of the host state as well as collective recognition and admission to the United Nations (UN) as the most optimal grounds for obtaining international recognition (Dugard 1987; Ker-Lindsay 2012). Individual studies of emerging states have mainly focussed on exploring domestic political order and strategies for survival in the international system (Caspersen 2012; Cunningham 2014). A handful number of studies which consider secession as emancipation and improvement of social condition haven’t been given sufficient attention (see Laoutides 2015). So far, theories of recognition have not managed to profoundly understand the micro-politics, discourses, performances, and entanglements, which are essential for obtaining diplomatic recognition and admission to the international community. Nina Caspersen (2015: 394) rightly points out that “state recognition has not been afforded much attention in the political science or international relations literature”, highlighting that most analyses of state recognition have adopted a top-down approach, focusing on international responses to claims of statehood and emphasizing the importance of system-level factors for state recognition such as the strategic interests of great powers or a concern with the stability of the international system. At best, as Jens Bartelson (2013: 110) argues, they “have been instrumental in justifying different forms of exclusion in world politics, thus bringing about a hierarchical relationship between those entities that merit recognition and those who do not”. While we know a great deal about the philosophical, legal, and sociological aspects of sovereign statehood, we have limited knowledge of how new states emerge and obtain international recognition and membership in international organisations through everyday diplomatic practices. What is the role of emerging states in generating external support for recognition and membership in international bodies? What are the diplomatic strategies and tactics that they use to penetrate international exclusionary order? Becoming a sovereign state 3 This book explores the everyday politics of constructing independent statehood and obtaining international recognition in a case involving a non-consensual declaration of independence from the former host state. The analysis focuses on the case of Kosovo as an emerging state kept in limbo, neither denied nor conferred full access to the club of sovereign states (see Anderson 2011: 188). The absence of certain sovereign attributes of modern statehood make Kosovo a suitable case for understanding how sovereignty is enacted within the conditions of its absence. As Claire Monagle and Dimitris Vardoulakis (2013: 1) argue, “sovereignty exists only in moments of absence, only when referentiality is abandoned and the nothing is paramount”. On 17 February 2008, Kosovo’s democratic representatives declared independence in close coordination with the U.S. and European partner states. Kosovo was the last entity to declare independence after the violent dissolution of former Yugoslavia, after enduring a decade of state violence and ethnic conflict by the Serbian regime, and another subsequent decade of international administration and supervision. Between 2006 and 2008, the United Nations led talks for defining Kosovo’s future political status, which concluded that supervised independence was the most viable solution for peace, democracy, and prosperity in Kosovo and the wider region (Weller 2009; Visoka 2017). However, this recommended settlement faced objections from Serbia as the former host state backed by Russia and supported by China who threatened to veto the UN’s plan for supervised independence for Kosovo. The failure of the UN Security Council to endorse Kosovo’s independence set the country on a complex path of becoming a sovereign state. Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 and its subsequent efforts to achieve diplomatic recognition have generated a range of reactions and uncertainties (Newman and Visoka 2016). A group of scholars claim that Kosovo’s independence can be supported by international law as an exceptional case, taking into account the remedial case for secession following systematic human rights abuses, the context and constitutional circumstances following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the failed international efforts for conflict resolution, the commitment of the international administration and independent Kosovo to democratic statebuilding process, and a supervised transition to independence (Hannum 2011; Weller 2011; Bolton 2013). This is challenged by others who refer to the overruling norm of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, the necessity of securing consent from the host state before permitting any separation of territory, and the dangerous implications for international order that the Kosovo case presents in relation to other secessionist claims (Pavković and Radan 2011; Wilde 2011; KerLindsay 2012; Milanović and Wood 2015). The Kosovo case has also highlighted broad international divisions on the issue of secession and recognition. On the one hand, the United States and most European states and other allies strongly support Kosovo’s statehood and sovereignty, and its campaign for international recognition. On the other hand, Serbia – backed by Russia – strongly opposes Kosovo’s independence and proactively works to obstruct the granting of diplomatic recognition to it. China, India, Brazil, and South Africa – among other important states rising in international influence – have also rejected Kosovo’s 4 Becoming a sovereign state legal independence. Other states, including many located in the global south, occupy a middle ground, seeking to balance and maintain their positions, often delaying the decision to recognise Kosovo. Although Kosovo has demonstratively fulfilled the core criteria for modern statehood – a distinct population consisting of different ethnic groups, a defined territory, an effective government with effective authority throughout the territory, and well-proven ability to enter into international relations – it was forced to invest extensive diplomatic efforts to substantiate further its statehood by securing international sovereignty and membership in international organisations. For Kosovo, diplomatic recognition represents the final challenge before being admitted into the club of sovereign states and is a pre-condition for functioning normally in the global system. As stipulated by Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuçi in 2008: “the recognition of Kosovo is as important as the declaration of independence” (New York Times 2008). Aware of its political salience, the absence of universal recognition has become a threat to Kosovo’s political existence and an encounter that undermines its domestic sovereignty and territorial integrity. Similarly, membership in international organisations has become another important pathway for admission into international society. In particular, “admission to full UN membership is tantamount to collective de jure recognition . . . [and] . . . is also likely to facilitate the entry of the new state into other multilateral organizations” (Geldenhuys 2009: 22). Diplomatic recognition has become one of the crucial obstacles for Kosovo’s international participation, as well as its concrete aspiration to join the Euro-Atlantic community, which is essential for Kosovo’s political and economic survival. Without securing an overwhelming number of recognitions and eventually generating sufficient support among the UN Security Council members (especially Russia and China), Kosovo cannot become a full member of the UN. Remaining outside the UN challenges the political, economic and societal development of Kosovo. Recognition has also negatively affected foreign investment and the country’s integration in global markets, its equal treatment in international affairs and the free movement of Kosovo’s citizens. Despite these challenges, during its first decade as an independent state, Kosovo has secured recognition from 115 states, established diplomatic relations with over 80 states, opened 25 embassies, and became a member of over 60 international and regional organisations (see Map 1.1 and Appendix 1). What explains Kosovo’s success to date in becoming a recognised state and a member of the international community? Has wide international recognition made Kosovo a sovereign state? What role did great powers and their own proactive diplomacy play in strengthening Kosovo’s international subjectivity? As Kosovo has neither been entirely accepted nor rejected as a state by the international community, what are its prospects for surviving this liminal state of affairs? This book is the first ethnographic research seeking to understand thoroughly Kosovo’s diplomatic approach and its everyday micro-politics aimed at consolidating statehood and becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership in international organisations. It seeks to examine what role can an emerging, partially recognised state play in its own creation. States that have recognised Kosovo’s independence States that withhold recognition of Kosovo’s independence Map 1.1 Map of states that have recognised Kosovo’s independence by 2017 6 Becoming a sovereign state State-becoming: discourse, performance, and entanglement This book argues that Kosovo’s diplomatic success in consolidating its sovereign statehood – namely obtaining bilateral recognition and securing membership in international organisations – has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions, and shaped by a complex entanglement within global assemblages of norms, actors, relations, and events. Although powerful states played an important role in strengthening Kosovo’s international standing, Kosovo’s own diplomatic efforts have shaped the dynamics and outcomes of its campaign for international legitimation. The diplomatic agency of the nascent states lies in their ability to shape and transform their international status not only through discursive and performative actions, but also by mobilising support from global and regional powers. As a result of this prudent diplomatic approach, Kosovo as an emerging state developed its own legitimating narratives, generated support from different states, challenged the international exclusionary norms, and found loopholes in the global legal and political system to fight for its place among the sovereign nations. This book is a study of the micro-politics of the diplomatic agency of emerging states. Emerging states are those state-like entities that possess most of the attributes of modern sovereign statehood, but lack full international recognition. The existing literature tends to use other terms such as “quasi-states” (Jackson 1990), “de facto states” (Pegg 1998), “separatist states” (Lynch 2002), “states-withinstates” (Kingston and Spears 2004), or “unrecognised states” (Caspersen 2012), which will not be extensively used here due to their derogatory and limited ability to comprehend the subject matter of this study. Alternative terms, such as emerging, new and nascent states, are used instead to account for the processual character of state-becoming. The micro-politics of diplomatic recognition and membership in international organisations encompasses contextual and differentiated discourses and performances invoked by fledging states in their pursuit of diplomatic recognition, as well as the dialogical dynamics and diplomatic techniques aimed at generating international acceptance and overcoming obstacles from opponents. To make sense of statehood as derivatives of discourses, performances, and entanglements, we need to view state-becoming as an everyday endeavour which is an historically-situated, socially-mediated, and inter-subjectively-constituted process (see Fabry 2013: 168). The analysis in this book seeks to depart from conventional and legal debates on statehood, secession, and recognition to demonstrate that the recognition of states is not only a matter of law or a single act, but is first and foremost a matter related to the performative diplomacy of fledgling states and a process which involves complex entanglement with external forces. Understanding the everyday making of statehood requires looking at how the different discourses are invoked to give meaning to sovereign statehood, how different diplomatic performances are deployed to make sovereignty statehood internationally recognisable, and how entangled relations, events, narratives, and assemblages of actors can facilitate or impede the processes of securing recognition and membership in international Becoming a sovereign state 7 organisations. The everyday is one of the most promising sites for capturing the praxeological mutation of sovereignty, with all its contradictions and entanglements. The everyday is the site where all social interactions happen, where discursive and material aspects of statehood and sovereignty emerge and disappear, where agencies are performed, where norms, rules, and policies are created and changed, and where ontological security and insecurity is generated (see Gardiner 2000). As Christian Krohn-Hansen and Knut G. Nustad (2005: 12) maintain, “a modern state must be understood as produced by broad and continuously shifting fields of power relationships, everyday practices and formations of meaning”. This level of analysis enables the examination of how Kosovo’s foreign policy community has interpreted the process of international legitimation while also revealing modes of interaction in different diplomatic contexts and settings. The essence of Kosovo’s diplomatic agency has been the persisting character and commitment of its political leadership to achieve sovereign statehood, which was driven by a politics of hope and collective self-confidence that Kosovo should be independent and act as a sovereign state. Kosovo’s active struggle for independent statehood lasted almost two decades, without accounting for earlier historical attempts for self-determination. To achieve independent statehood, Kosovo started a campaign to disassociate from Serbia through peaceful means. Its people endured the violent response of the Milošević regime and subsequently underwent third-party conflict mediation and international military intervention for humanitarian reasons (Judah 2000). Kosovo then accepted international administration and supervision, and finally survived as a contested state, exposed to political, legal, and economic uncertainties. In absence of universal recognition and full access in multilateral organisations, Kosovo was forced to use liminal spaces to perform its diplomatic agency, and it built informal diplomatic networks to bypass formalities and bureaucratic impediments posed by the inhospitable international order towards new states (see Newman and Visoka 2016). The consistency of its diplomatic conduct lay in the fluidity of approaches, discourses, performances, and entanglements utilised for obtaining recognition and membership in international bodies. Although Kosovo historically demonstrates the core features of statehood (permanent population, territory, and self-governance in the form of autonomy), its own prudent and performative diplomatic tactics carry significant merit for generating international support throughout the two-decade journey for independent statehood (see Figure 1.1). The initial campaign of civil resistance following the Serbia’s actions to abolish Kosovo’s autonomy led to the internationalisation of Kosovo’s case for independence. The subsequent armed resistance led to international military intervention, placing Kosovo under UN administration, which permanently removed Serbia’s control over the territory. The UN-led state building process created the necessary structures for Kosovo to function as an independent, normal, democratic, and self-sufficient state. The UN-led talks for the definition of Kosovo’s final status and its subsequent coordinated declaration of independence made the clear majority of the international community co-owners of Kosovo’s struggle for international recognition and membership in international organisations. The 8 Becoming a sovereign state 180 150 120 95 111 113 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 84 90 64 60 108 115 104 72 53 30 0 2008 2009 2019 2011 2012 Figure 1.1 Recognition of Kosovo (2008–2017) long-term presence of U.S. and European states in Kosovo set the country on a special trajectory for integrating itself into the international community through joining the Euro-Atlantic political, economic, and security organisations. Acting like a sovereign state requires recognition by other states and sovereign representation on the world stage, both of which are mediated by and embedded in specific narratives, discourses and speech acts. State sovereignty and the case for recognition are first and foremost social and textual constructs, which come into being and are performed through everyday practices of writing and talking (Neumann 2002). Diplomatic discourse defined as the situational use of written and spoken language to convey certain messages and signal intentions plays a central role in the enactment of statehood because it has the power to constitute certain situations, produce and reproduce knowledge, and most importantly shape interests, identities, relationships, and norms (Hansen 2006; Cornut 2015). Therefore, by placing discourse at the centre of the study of the everyday making of statehood, international relations can be observed as intertextual relations, and we can also unravel how state-becoming is implicated with meaning-making. The way that sovereignty is worded helps its “worlding”. Short of political, economic, and military power, Kosovo based its campaign for international affirmation on normative grounds expressed through a wide range of differentiated discourses and narratives. Most of Kosovo’s diplomatic text has been a product of tactical and practical knowledge, which was partially based on textualisation of its own unique events and adjustment to favourable global narratives and norms on statehood. In general, Kosovo’s discursive framework guiding its quest for recognition was organised around historical, legal, normative, political, and situational arguments. First-order discourses highlighted Kosovo’s remedial right to self-determination arising from Serbia’s abolition of its autonomy, human rights abuses, and violent conflict followed by international Becoming a sovereign state 9 intervention, as well as successful statebuilding process. Second-order discourses reflected the existing knowledge of sovereign statehood, showing how Kosovo satisfied the core criteria of modern statehood, such as population, territory, effective government, and ability to enter into international relations, and legal legitimacy conferred by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2010. Third-order discourses intended to respond to global situational narratives on political stability, state resiliency, and regional security to make the case for why Kosovo is a peace-loving and responsible state that deserves admission into the club of sovereign and recognised states. Diplomatic narratives and story-telling at the heart of Kosovo’s campaign for recognition were part of a legitimation process which intended to promote and naturalise Kosovo’s status as a sovereign state and make the case for recognition more acceptable. The legitimacy of Kosovo’s quest for recognition was determined by how appealing and persuasive its diplomatic discourse was. These discourses were essential to ensure that Kosovo’s requests for recognition generate positive international responses, to ensure that diplomatic performances change the stance of other states towards Kosovo, and penetrate more easily into global institutions and events that are often inhospitable spaces for outsiders and unrecognised states. These various discourses have been invoked, renewed, and regularly revised to adjust to diplomatic interlocutors and designated audiences. The impact of Kosovo’s diplomatic discourses can be noted in the recognition letters of many states that have recognised its independence, who when justifying their recognition frequently invoked the normative grounds put forward by Kosovo’s diplomats and their international allies. Most of the scholarly work on statehood perceives the existence of states as a priori, as a social and material reality manifested through an effective government, territory, and distinct populace – detached from everyday performances. Similarly, literature on state recognition tends to view recognition as a formal act bestowed upon a claimant entity, conferring onto the status of recognised state (Fabry 2013). This monolithic view not only fails to account for the nuances and the multi-staged process of state recognition, but it also omits a broad range of modes of international engagement of emerging states prior to or without obtaining diplomatic recognition. Contrary to such views, becoming a state is a performative endeavour that comprises patterned and fluid routines, repetition, practices, and spontaneous activities. As Janis Grzybowski and Martti Koskenniemi (2015: 29) rightly point out, “statehood has no ontological status apart from the claims, representations, assumptions and routines performing it in political and legal practices”. Diplomatic performances are what makes new states recognisable entitles in world politics. Performing sovereignty gives meaning to statehood and reproduces and justifies the state’s existence. Kosovo’s quest for diplomatic recognition and membership in international organisations was first and foremost a performative process, which consisted of multiple repetitive, patterned, and spontaneous actions seeking to create political effects and create felicitous conditions for enhancing its international subjectivity. Securing diplomatic recognition and membership in international organisations 10 Becoming a sovereign state required a complex performative diplomacy that consisted of everyday actions for requesting recognition through diplomatic correspondences, for undertaking formal and informal visits, and for participating in multilateral events. Without a long-standing diplomatic tradition, Kosovo’s diplomatic performances became embedded in the daily improvisation of lobbying practices and international connections to overcome limited resources, capacities, and networks Kosovo’s diplomacy relied mainly on personal agency, soft power tactics, trying to leverage the diplomatic networks of powerful states, and using a differentiated and processual lobbying strategy (see Pouliot 2016). The recognition strategy has been flexible and adjustable during the performative process depending if the interlocutors were supportive of independence, if they are willing to engage with Kosovo without formal recognition, or if they had a neutral or negative stance towards the fledgling state. The tactics of Kosovo’s performative diplomacy constantly changed, but they generally had three strategic levels. The first level included working with each state individually and adjusting the approach to seek bilateral recognition within a specific context. The second level targeted specific groups of states and regions with the sole purpose of adapting the actions for recognition against the political factors and dynamics specific to particular regions and groups of states. The third level included working with international organisations and mechanisms to establish links with individual states and gain collective recognition from international organisations. The process of recognition usually started with sending requests for recognition to a wide range of countries. Performing the request for recognition has necessitated taking a contextual approach by adjusting the discourses, practices, and entanglements to the specific circumstances, personalities, cultural traditions, and geo-political positions of the interlocutors. Such a situational invocation of narratives has been essential to give substance to this initial stage of performative diplomacy. Depending on the initial responses, follow-up efforts proceeded seeking informal diplomatic contact either bilaterally or within the multilateral sites. Without full access within the international system, Kosovo’s diplomatic approach relied heavily on unconventional tactics establishing contact with foreign diplomats through the diplomatic networks of supportive states, and direct encounters as part of regional and global events. The best outcome from those initial meetings was to secure official bilateral meetings: such face-to-face diplomacy was essential to advance bilateral relations, since they enabled Kosovo’s diplomats to address any prejudices about Kosovo, explain the significance of recognition for Kosovo’s survival, and build personal relationships with foreign ministers and diplomats. To ease the process of formal recognition, Kosovo engaged in institutional cooperation with other states, such as recognising passports, opening economic and trade offices, and intensifying political consultations in bilateral and multilateral settings. Finally, when the domestic and international factors were ripe, the formal recognition act was performed according to the various diplomatic traditions and modalities. Overall, performative diplomacy has been most effective in changing the stance of those countries who did not categorically oppose Kosovo’s independence, but did not have the issue on their Becoming a sovereign state 11 foreign policy radar. Performative diplomacy enabled Kosovo to subvert dominant international structures, institutions, and legal and bureaucratic orthodoxies that maintain an exclusionary international order. Most importantly, performative diplomacy has enabled Kosovo’s diplomats to manoeuvre more easily and sustain the momentum for recognition. Parallel to securing bilateral diplomatic recognition, Kosovo’s quest for membership in regional and international organisations was crucial for enhancing country’s international standing, reducing the costs of bilateral diplomacy, and benefiting from the political, economic, and social opportunities of multilateralism. Performative diplomacy has also been essential to secure access to international fora initially as a participant, then as an observer and eventually as a member state. The more recognitions Kosovo secured the stronger the chances became to obtain sufficient support for membership in different regional and international organisations. In turn, the more organisations Kosovo joined the stronger its case for recognition became. So far, Kosovo has become a member of over 60 regional and international organisations, which are mainly financial, sporting, and regional organisations. However, Kosovo has not yet managed to join major political and security organisations, such as the United Nations, NATO, Council of Europe, European Union, or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. While admission to the UN would serve as a shortcut to collective recognition and membership in other international bodies, this option was unfeasible due to the opposition of Russia and China to Kosovo’s independence and the eventual exercise of their veto at the UN Security Council. Among all international organisations, for Kosovo, membership in the EU and NATO remain most significant for entrenching the political, security, and geostrategical aspects of its statehood. Although the EU, due to the position taken by five member states, does not yet collectively recognise Kosovo, the country has managed to maintain an open perspective for becoming part of these organisations, which has indirectly helped its case for recognition and integration in other regional bodies. Despite procedural and political blockages, Kosovo’s dissident approach has secured access to low-key international organisations, initially as participant and subsequently as a member state by subverting its political and strategic intentions into technical and functional arguments. Kosovo focussed its efforts on joining organisations whose admission criteria, composition, and political orientation were more favourable to Kosovo. Performing participation and applying for membership in regional and international organisations served both as a rehearsal process for the eventual application to major international organisations, but also as an intermediary instrument to maintain incremental access to the international community before gradually aspiring to full membership (see McConnell 2016). Although membership in regional and international organisations was first and foremost about strengthening its sovereign statehood, Kosovo has portrayed its bid for membership in different bodies as a technical process intended to strengthen human rights protection and support socio-economic development, and to deepen regional cooperation on security and transnational threats. 12 Becoming a sovereign state State-becoming is a deeply relational process, which entails developing associations with certain geo-political assemblages of actors, discourses, and relations and deliberately dissociating from other actors, narratives, and geo-political assemblages (see Jeffrey 2013; Dittmer 2014, 2017). By the same token, diplomatic recognition and membership in international organisations is not only a by-product of diplomatic discourse and performative processes, but also a derivative of entanglement with multiple external forces. Kosovo’s everyday making of statehood was not only shaped by the merits of its case for statehood and its performative diplomacy, but also by global entanglements of actors, events, discourses, and relations that have simultaneously enabled and impeded Kosovo’s integration into the international community. In other words, diplomatic entanglements demonstrate that beyond performative efforts, there are other related and unrelated events, political relations, and developments that may produce enabling or disenabling effects on Kosovo’s process of international legitimation. Such entanglements exposed Kosovo to unexpected assemblages of exclusionary norms, political analogies and normative displacements, great power rivalry, and sudden loss of international attention. Existing accounts of state recognition highlight the significant role that the support of major power plays in the admission of new states to the club of sovereign states. After independence, strengthening Kosovo’s international standing was one of the United States of America’s (U.S.) foreign policy priorities in Europe. Similarly, the United Kingdom (UK) and other major European powers have devoted considerable diplomatic efforts to support Kosovo’s recognition and membership in international bodies. It is difficult to identify how many recognitions can be solely attributed to Kosovo’s international supporters because each case was a complex process involving multiple lobbying efforts, and different actors. However, it can be noted that almost half of the recognitions secured by Kosovo between 2008 and 2011 were influenced by great power support for Kosovo. Often, arguments focussing on power politics and normative factors behind the success of state recognition underestimate the micro-level factors and downplay the role of fledgling states as important diplomatic agents influencing their own destiny (see Kolstø 2006; Caspersen 2012). Unpacking the process of diplomatic recognition and membership in international organisations reveals that, although great power support has unambiguously been a factor behind Kosovo’s wide international recognition, the role of Kosovo’s diplomacy as an initiator and coordinator of support from great powers was decisive. The conundrum of Kosovo’s diplomatic success lies in the complementarity of efforts undertaken by Kosovo’s own diplomatic efforts combined with the support provided by its international partners, and entanglements with other situational factors. Great power support for recognition was not static or constant, as often assumed, due to international events and changes in political leadership over time. In any case, such support has been effective only when Kosovo’s diplomacy worked closely with the diplomatic services of great powers. In this regard, fledgling states seeking international legitimation tend to play a far more significant role in mobilising great power support and mingling with global Becoming a sovereign state 13 political assemblages than is often assumed. Aware of external political, legal and institutional constraints, Kosovo had no choice but to cultivate a prudent approach to seeking international legitimation though situational diplomatic performances and strategic entanglements with other powerful states. Kosovo’s political leadership has intentionally cultivated this strategic dependency to ensure international political support and engagement for Kosovo’s transition to full statehood and international recognition. Moreover, the support of influential states has not been purely altruistic without any strings attached. Kosovo’s international partners have constantly conditioned their international support in exchange for domestic political, economic, and security concessions regarding democratic and institutional reforms, the rule of law, accommodating minorities, and economic development. Geo-political considerations also feature. Support for Kosovo’s independence is often framed as the most optimal solution to maintain stability in the Balkans and mitigate regional conflict. The networked character of diplomatic influences contributed to the expansion of Kosovo’s diplomatic recognition. The recognition of Kosovo’s independence by influential global and regional powers not only added global legitimacy to the quest for international recognition, but also served as a strong pressure point to encourage subsequent recognition from other less influential countries. Kosovo’s socialisation with international diplomatic practices not only helped the country learn how to navigate and penetrate the international system, but also how to identify and utilise temporarily structured diplomatic pecking orders. Kosovo prioritised seeking recognition from regional powers as this often encouraged recognition by neighbouring countries with similar political, economic, and security structures. As many countries coordinated their foreign policy actions, each wave of recognition influenced the following recognitions. These observations notwithstanding, a closer look at the micro-politics and the entangled character of world politics reveals that support from great powers is not always the most important determinant of state-becoming. On the contrary, small states have often resisted great power pressure to recognise Kosovo, which in turn undermined the international prestige and standing of Kosovo’s supporters, gradually pushing them to withdraw from lobbying on behalf of Kosovo. In diplomatic assemblages, agency is not constituted upon the political strengths of the actors concerned, but rather on the monumental combination of political forces with fractural agency and emergent features. Remote global developments such as violent conflicts, sudden regime change, and internal political instability have directly influenced Kosovo’s prospects for international recognition and membership in international organisations. Hence, beyond human agency, the sequences of global events, luck, and chance have played a profound role in enabling or obstructing the consolidation of Kosovo’s statehood. Kosovo’s case for international recognition was entangled in a strange and unexpected way with multiple other geo-political assemblages that impeded its efforts for strengthening international standing. Unsurprisingly, Serbia as the former host state has proactively tried to prevent the recognition of Kosovo’s independence as well as its participation in, and membership in, international organisations. In 14 Becoming a sovereign state addition to using their own well-established diplomatic network and influence, Serbia has also benefited from the support of Russia and other traditional allies in opposing Kosovo’s access to international society. Kosovo’s opponents often portrayed it as a ‘puppet state’ of the U.S., which did little to endear Kosovo to the global rivals of the U.S., including Russia, China, and other emerging regional powers. To undermine its global legitimacy, Kosovo’s opponents also argued that recognising Kosovo would set a negative and dangerous precedent for other breakaway regions and secessionist conflicts. Around 40 countries that have not yet recognised Kosovo have one or more active internal secessionist groups. For these countries, non-recognition of Kosovo had nothing to do with the normative merits of Kosovo’s case for statehood, but it was first and foremost a domestic political matter. Finally, Kosovo’s quest for diplomatic recognition and membership in international organisations was not only shaped by global and external forces, but also by domestic engagements, political developments, and formative events that have served as enabling and impeding factors. The more stable Kosovo institutions became, the more resources and attention were devoted to the campaign for diplomatic recognition. The political stability that prevailed in Kosovo between 2008 and 2014 corresponded with the highest number of recognitions, as well as significant progress regarding membership in regional and international bodies. During these years, on average, Kosovo managed annually to secure around ten recognitions and join two or three international organisations. However, after 2014, delays in forming government and paralysis within the government and parliament unintentionally stalled Kosovo’s proactive diplomacy, which had lost the momentum previously gained in advancing international participation. After independence, the political agenda in Kosovo was dominated by constant domestic crises derived from political conflict between the government and opposition, local resistance against the EU-facilitated dialogue for the normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, EU conditionality and pressure for institutional reform, as well as socio-economic problems with employment, migration, and increased religious extremism (Capussela 2015; Visoka 2017). In particular, frequent electoral cycles and protracted stalemates in government formation resulted in losing the momentum for securing recognition from many states who were close to confirming recognition, as well as allowing Kosovo’s opponents the space to pursue their counter-recognition strategy unchallenged. These domestic developments not only tested the extent to which Kosovo’s institutions were capable of running the country without external interference, but also directly affected Kosovo’s ability to dedicate sufficient resources and attention to the recognition process. In February 2018, Kosovo marked its tenth anniversary of independent statehood. Although extensive diplomatic recognition and membership in a good number of international organisations are important indicators of wider international legitimacy, as long as Kosovo remains outside the UN its political existence remains under threat. Kosovo’s prospects for joining the European Union and NATO are grim due to the extensive reforms required and the fact that some of Becoming a sovereign state 15 the members of these organisations have not yet recognised Kosovo. Admission to the UN is unlikely without the consent of Serbia, Russia, and China, who are increasingly becoming hostile towards the waning international power of the U.S. and European states. A potential way out for Kosovo’s contested statehood would be to reach an agreement with Serbia as part of the journey undertaken by both countries to join the EU, which could require granting Kosovo’s Serbian minority wider autonomy within the context of a complex arrangement whereby Serbia would implicitly accept Kosovo’s independence and consent to its membership in the UN without formally conferring recognition. This would end Kosovo’s decade-long quest for bilateral recognition, but it could expose the country to the potential recursive secession of the Serbian community. If this scenario does not work, Kosovo will be obliged to either continue its current approach of seeking incremental integration into the international system, or seek a radical change to its status by seeking functional reunification with the kin-state of Albania. Such an unlikely move could result in redrawing political borders and return of troubles in the Balkans. Seen from this perspective, the question of Kosovo’s sovereign status is not yet entirely closed and the next stage will be definitive in either making or breaking the country’s desire to become a sovereign state. Relevance The scope and argument of this book provides an original contribution to the intersecting debates on the creation of new states after international intervention, on the diplomatic agency of contested states, and the changing norms and politics of diplomatic recognition and admission to international society. Kosovo is a widely-researched case study in international relations as it provides fertile epistemological grounds for understanding a wide range of contemporary problems in world politics. While the dynamics of peacebuilding and statebuilding in Kosovo are often discussed, little is known about the micro-politics of Kosovo’s successful campaign for consolidating statehood and becoming sovereignty.1 To date, no detailed study has examined Kosovo’s foreign policy. This book is the first scholarly attempt to understand comprehensively Kosovo’s foreign policy based on first-hand experiences of the actors who were behind the making and practicing Kosovo’s diplomacy for seeking recognition and membership in international organisations. Therefore, this book offers new insights into Kosovo’s campaign for securing diplomatic recognition, the challenges and processes for securing membership in international bodies, and the contextual particularities of engaging in diplomatic relations, reducing dependency on external patron states, negotiating agreements, and becoming part of the society of democratic states. This study also includes new unpublished archival material that can be useful and informative for future research on Kosovo and the foreign policy of emerging states. Although there is extensive research on the politics, legality, and ethics of supporting or opposing external self-determination, and on the normative and political conditions that promote or hinder the formation of new states, less work has been undertaken on the micro-politics and practices of the contemporary making of 16 Becoming a sovereign state statehood. The book provides insights into what counts as a legitimate and recognised state in world politics, who deserves to achieve external self-determination, and how to redefine the cartography of states considering existing international, norms, rules, and regimes. By exploring everyday diplomatic practices, especially how situational discourses, performances, and agential entanglements contribute to strengthening statehood, this book contributes to expanding our understanding of the changing nature of state sovereignty, the micro-politics of diplomatic recognition, and the membership dynamics of international organisations. First and foremost, this book demonstrates that power-driven and norm-based theories of state recognition have limited ability to account for the processual and performative character of state-becoming in international relations. The practice-based perspective developed by this book provides a better explanation of the micropolitics, complex factors, and fluid dynamics that shape international recognition and the path for nascent states to join global governmental institutions. Furthermore, the book contributes to diplomatic studies by revealing new modes of diplomatic agency and resistance in world politics, especially by outlining how an emerging state can navigate and overcome existing blockages posed by existing international norms, rules, and institutions. The book contributes to the anthropology of the state by unravelling the everyday making of sovereign statehood and documenting a broad range of narratives, performances, and assemblages which contribute to the consolidation, territorialisation, and normalisation of political power, authority, and sovereignty in contested spaces. The book contributes to International Relations (IR) debates by expanding and consolidating further the study of the everyday in world politics. Studying Kosovo’s everyday state-becoming contributes to the pluralisation of our understanding of global political spaces, and expands the political imagining of sovereignty, liminality, and processes of becoming and entanglement in world politics. Everyday struggles for international legitimation are important as they confront the existing sovereignty entrapments in world politics and open the space for new forms of political subjectivity materialised through alternative integration in international society. Most research on post-conflict societies and newly established states focusses on international intervention and the question of how the international shapes local peace, polity, and society. This book illustrates the reverse: how emerging states intervene in the international system to defy and modify norms, values, practices, and orthodoxies concerning international law, sovereign statehood, diplomatic recognition, and the admission to international organisations. This book is not intended as a blueprint for the foreign policy conduct of contested states, nor to serve as a prescriptive rulebook on how to become a sovereign state. The book should be read as a reflexive policy provocation for existing international policies towards emerging states. It intentionally does not compare Kosovo with other emerging states, which have different degrees of international contestation and recognition: it is important to consider emerging states on their own individual merits. The book seeks to illustrate both empirically and conceptually the contemporary politics of state-becoming in world politics, as experienced Becoming a sovereign state 17 by Kosovo, in the hope that there will be an increasing openness towards subjugated peoples and emerging states who struggle for recognition in world politics. The analysis in this book seeks to demonstrate that international studies ranging from IR and diplomatic studies to political sociology, anthropology, and geography, and area studies need to engage more critically with the question of emerging states and their status in world politics. It is time now to recognise them as political and epistemological categories. Research approach This book examines the micro-politics of Kosovo’s everyday making of statehood, namely the role of discourse, performance, and entanglement in gaining international legitimacy and overcoming external contestation. Capturing the everyday making of statehood requires combining various tools and methods of observing, conversing, reading, and listening critically to the discursive and performative aspects of the diplomatic life of new states. The analysis focusses on exploring three core dimensions of Kosovo’s diplomatic agency, namely discourses, performances, and entanglements that have been central features in guiding and shaping Kosovo’s campaign for diplomatic recognition and membership in international bodies. In achieving this goal, the analysis draws on institutional ethnography, participant observations, and practice-tracing. Institutional ethnography looks at the everyday life of institutions, performances, power dynamics, and policy-making processes. It enables understanding the micro-politics behind policy actions, the agency of individuals, while making sense of local, national, regional, and international entanglements of agencies, relations, and events, as well as understanding thoroughly a broad variety of diplomatic performances, improvisations, and imitations. As Vincent Pouliot and Jérémie Cornut (2015: 308) have recently argued, capturing diplomatic practices requires a deep understanding of the social context in which actors are caught, and this context is often impenetrable to an external observer . . . practices must be studied through observations over prolonged periods of time, which is often difficult to do for scholars. Accounting for everyday performative practices and entangled agencies of statebecoming inevitably requires in-depth situational knowledge and proximity to the place and actors that have written discourses, performed actions, and articulated entangled agencies. Institutional ethnography is an approach that seeks to explore the everyday knowledge, ruling relations and organisations, power dynamics, and institutional complexes, which are rooted in textual and performative practices (Smith 2005). Institutional ethnography can be a useful methodological guide for understanding, mapping, and exploring the everyday construction and practice of sovereignty within the institutional premises of newly established states that struggle to consolidate sovereignty through literary and interactionist practices (Smith 2005). 18 Becoming a sovereign state The ethnographic analysis within this book focusses on the everyday work of Kosovo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its diplomatic service abroad: this is possible as the author served as a foreign policy adviser from 2013 and 2014. Most recent studies show that “one of the strengths of institutional ethnography is the bottom-up approach to data collection” (Klein 2018: 73). This embodiment at the epicentre of Kosovo’s diplomatic agency has enabled the author to observe closely meaning-making, performativity, and entanglements, which have guided Kosovo’s foreign policy of state recognition and membership in international bodies. In exploring the diplomatic discourses, the analysis draws on a wide range of policy documents, diplomatic notes, policy speeches, internal memos, and unpublished and unclassified archival material, which were produced and collected by Kosovo’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: the epicentre where the everyday making of sovereign statehood occurred. The examination of diplomatic narratives is also triangulated with event analysis drawing on direct observations, conversations with Kosovo’s diplomats, and reviewing publically available audio-visual material. In examining Kosovo’s diplomatic performances, such as everyday lobbying tactics, official and unofficial visits, participation in multilateral events, face-toface diplomacy, and other remote lobbying efforts, the analysis is based on participant observation and contingent generalisation of practices illustrated by suitable examples and evidence. Finally, for the examination of diplomatic entanglements, the analysis draws on diplomatic correspondence, public statements, and political speeches, as well as interviews with Kosovo diplomats and foreign policy decision-makers. Most research within social sciences is subjective, but often portrayed as unbiased through inventing sophisticated analytical and methodological frameworks, protocols, and approaches to obtain internal and external validity (see Inayatullah 2011). This book attempts to break away from such logics of inquiry and seeks to promote reflexive research on state-becoming, which is congruent with the real world and closer to the complex truth-making processes. Although this book has an auto-ethnographical segment, it is mainly based on the critical analysis of diplomatic documents, interviews and conversations with Kosovo’s diplomats, as well as engagement with broader scholarly debates in international relations and international law, political sociology, state anthropology, and human geography. Focussing on a single case study is the most suitable approach to delve into multiple practices, particularities, and details, which are unlikely to be captured by quantitative or comparative studies. The global historical sociology of state-becoming shows that the birth, consolidation, and transformation of states undergo unique trajectories. Therefore, studying emerging states on their own is the most ethical option to avoid conceptual overstretching, generalisation, and comparison, which can often become the source of epistemic injustice and exclusionary practices in the real world. When examining Kosovo’s diplomatic discourse, performances, and entanglements, the analysis focuses on the period from the declaration of independence in February 2008 until the end of 2017. This period is significant, as it includes a decade of intense diplomatic activity and enables the examination of a wide range of narratives, practices, and entangled Becoming a sovereign state 19 events, which have played a crucial role in the campaign for international legitimation. Accordingly, this methodological combination represents an attempt to develop a new local critical perspective on state-becoming in world politics. It seeks to illustrate empirically, yet in a comprehendible fashion, the known and unknown particularities of becoming sovereign under the conditions of contestation and dependency on the existing discourses, norms, rules, powerful states, and regularities of global politics. Outline of the book The book proceeds as follows. Chapter 2 outlines a new conceptual framework for studying the everyday making of statehood, which will guide the empirical analysis of the remainder of the book. The conceptual framework departs from the existing accounts of sovereignty in international relations and political sociology and assembles its key tenets from the critical political sociology of the everyday and institutional ethnography. It elaborates the interconnected nature of language and practices and the importance of pluralist epistemologies for capturing global entanglement in the context of state-becoming. Chapter 3 provides a nuanced history of Kosovo’s quest for independent statehood. It explores three key historical stages of Kosovo’s foreign policy and elaborates key events and developments that shaped Kosovo’s journey to independent statehood. The chapter also provides an overview of Kosovo’s key diplomatic achievements to date and sets the context for exploring Kosovo’s case of state-becoming under the conditions of international contestation. Chapter 4 explores the discursive dimension of Kosovo’s everyday making of statehood. Kosovo’s campaign for consolidating statehood was guided by a framework of discourses, which served to orient the everyday performance and justified why Kosovo deserves international recognition. The chapter provides a novel account of the constitutive elements of Kosovo’s discourse of statehood through the deconstruction of the narratives used in the process of recognition and membership in international organisations. Accordingly, this chapter provides for the first time a complete analysis of unpublished material, such as Kosovo’s foreign policy documents and the recognition notes. It unpacks the intersecting relationship between meaning-making and state-making. Chapter 5 explores Kosovo’s performative diplomacy, which consisted of a wide range of actions, tactics, improvisations, and gestures that were aimed at constructing a diplomatic approach for consolidating international sovereignty. The chapter provides insightful examples of Kosovo’s campaign for securing diplomatic recognition and unpacks the complex process of joining regional and international organisations. Chapter 6 elaborates the enabling and disenabling global entanglements that have shaped Kosovo’s prospects for becoming a sovereign state. The chapter disentangles the complex web of relations with great powers, the performative function of remote events and interests, and the entanglements with unrelated analogies, cases, and developments, which have jointly played a crucial role in Kosovo’s international affirmation. The concluding Chapter 7 provides a critical reappraisal 20 Becoming a sovereign state of the price paid by Kosovo for becoming a sovereign state and explores the potential scenarios that will shape Kosovo’s future. The book then concludes with an outline for a proposed critical research agenda on state recognition. Note 1 Some of the main studies of Kosovo published over the past decade include James KerLindsay’s (2009) critical chronology of Kosovo’s final status negotiations and Marc Weller’s (2009) legal account of the different stages of political negotiations leading to the independence of Kosovo. Due to their publication dates, neither work covers the political developments after Kosovo’s independence nor Kosovo’s campaign for strengthening its statehood. David L. Phillips (2012) examines the role of the U.S.’s coercive diplomacy and military intervention in the liberation of Kosovo, but the analysis ends when Kosovo proclaimed its independence. Andrea L. Capussela (2015) only analyses the political developments under the EU’s leadership after Kosovo’s independence and focusses on domestic aspects of statebuilding, such as the rule of law, political institutions, and the economy. Legal analyses undertaken by James Summers (2011); John Dugard (2013); Marko Milanović and Michael Wood (2015) focus on the implications of the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Kosovo for international law and the regulation of statehood, self-determination, and secession. 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