Kosovo’s Legitimacy Paradox and the Role of Emotions in International Law

Abstract

As of September 2021, Kosovo’s political elite, many of them war heroes from the 1998 campaign against the Former Yugoslavia, are now facing charges of war criminality at Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC), a hybrid court in The Hague. These proceedings comprise the next revolution of Kosovo’s indeterminate post-war status as a quasi-state, as it is not fully recognised as a state by the international community and not fully part of Europe. This article addresses Kosovo’s quasi-status and the long-undervalued emotional considerations of indeterminacy that impact the effectiveness of international law and the criminal proceedings underway in Kosovo’s tormented transition to democracy. The now decades-long state of exception that has characterised Western superintendency over the country has contributed to Kosovo’s impunity trap, where war criminality among political elites transposes into normalised narratives that selectively overlook the past. This state of exception has also contributed to Kosovo’s reputation as a captured and corrupt state, compromising civil society elements on which Kosovo’s future as a democracy depend. The effects of the West’s indeterminate conditionality toward Kosovo exposes emotional effects that challenge the operation of international law, a subject overlooked by the formalities of international criminal law.