United Nations at crossroads: international administration of territories and domestic political cultures. The Kosovo and East Timor experience

Abstract

Chapter VII has only been invoked twice for the establishment of international territorial administrations, in East Timor and Kosovo. Despite the institutional and political heritage of similar operations under the League of Nations and the United Nations framework, these two operations, seem to be established not only in an institutional vacuum due to the absence of a definition in the Charter, but also in an unsystematic manner, following a case by case approach in the selection of territories to be administered, the means for the implementation of ‘international governance’ and the final goals of these operations. These structural deficiencies influence the processes of civic society building, which is essential for the successful implementation of institutional reforms and consensual resolution of conflicts, elements that constitute the main pillars of peace-building operations. In this paper the institutional and conceptual framework of this new generation of operations is presented followed by an examination of the evolution of the concept of international governance and its contribution to the transition processes of the domestic political cultures in the territories concerned.