When Diplomacy Freezes Sovereignty: What Bosnia and Kosovo reveal about the future of post-conflict governance

Delvina Derguti, MSc International Social and Public Policy; LLB

Sovereignty as a variable

The Western Balkans is home to two distinct yet interrelated manifestations of post-conflict sovereignty: The Republic of Kosovo (henceforth ‘Kosovo’) exercises the functional attributes of a sovereign state – it has governing institutions, security forces, diplomatic representation and engages in international economic fora ①, yet remains excluded from the United Nations and unrecognised by many states ②; contrastingly, Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth ‘Bosnia’) enjoys international recognition but grapples with fragmented institutions and diffused sovereign authority ③. Both cases illustrate the operation of sovereignty as a spectrum not a binary condition, enabling it to be contested and conditional – not an embodiment of legal coherence and positivism. 

We introduce the notion of externally stabilised legitimacy to describe the contexts within which international actors guarantee minimum political order, alongside domestic authorities and institutions. In Bosnia this is manifested through the Daytona Framework ④, EUFOR Althea ⑤, and the Office of the High Representative (OHR)⑥, and in Kosovo through the Ahtisaari Plan⑦,  NATO’s KFOR mission ⑧  and EULEX ⑨. 

Although initially designed to be transitional arrangements, the durability of these frameworks may not only illuminate a mismatch between the intended aims and real outcomes of post-conflict governance, but it also prompts an assessment on whether Kosovo and Bosnia remain unfinished post-conflict state building projects or depict a shift toward a new governance model – one reframing stability as the aim, not sovereignty. 

If so, the implication may be to entrench Kosovo and Bosnia’s paradoxical sovereignty in two ways: first, the continued focus on diplomacy over solution may overshadow attempts by domestic institutions to exercise autonomy – this comes out of the fear that any domestic decisions may produce polarised disagreement. Secondly, the role of international actors may institutionalise fragmentation of authority, potentially cultivating vacuums for competing sources of legitimacy to exploit, and risking a return to fragmented societies. 

International Law and Strategic Ambiguity

The legal framework governing statehood is derived from the Montevideo Convention of 1993⑩ and is, prima facie, an objective assessment of facts: defined territory, population, effective government and capacity to enter into foreign relations. Yet, a debate between declaratory readings of this and constitutive ones has arisen. 

James Crawford ⑪ centres in this debate, suggesting that international law has yet to resolve this tension, not least because the legal framework suggests objectivity, but political judgement seems – in practice – to have played a role in whether statehood materialises. Although doctrinally Montevideo is a matter of legal principle, it seems it also provides a vocabulary for ordering, justifying and contesting politics. Crawford’s ⑪ framework informs our term strategic ambiguity: a structural gap between formal legal principles and their political operation in extending, deferring or withholding material outcomes. 

The International Court of Justice’s 2010 Advisory Opinion on Kosovo’s ⑫ declaration of independence encapsulates the conscious self-restraint of the law in the face of politics. Following a General Assembly request, the Court declared Kosovo’s independence did not violate international law; however, when providing an answer, they did so in narrow terms, declining to address the right of statehood and whether such a declaration incurred an obligation on other states to recognise Kosovo. Furthermore, the judgement did not include any discussion of remedial secession or interact with the doctrine of Uti Possidentis, circumventing any statements which could provide a basis for formal statehood. This is strategic ambiguity – it reflects the way in which politics intertwines with the law. Notably, this is less about malevolence or lacking political will, and more about the trade-offs that the law often makes. 

In arguing this ambiguity is a structural feature of tensions within the statehood doctrine, Simpson ⑬ provides a historical analysis of juridical sovereignty whereby sovereignty becomes a nuanced concept, ranging from formal to informal. Although such narratives are subject to debate, addressing the implications of such structures which may be embedded within the law, is imperative: what effect does strategic ambiguity in recognition have on the success of post-conflict governance?

Kosovo’s unresolved status and Bosnia’s constitutional dysfunction can therefore be examined not as anomalies of unresolved legal status, but as reflections of a specific legal-political equilibrium struck at the time of conflict. Thus, examining the persistence of current dynamics requires not mere legal analysis but an examination of geopolitics, incentive and institutional structures, and inquiry into the continued focus on stabilisation instead of resolution.

Peace not unity: Bosnia’s fragmented legitimacy and institutional paralysis

We turn to an inspection of how international frameworks interact with sovereign coherence. In examining Bosnia – a fully recognised state – one must consider the Daytona Peace Agreement of 1995④. Whilst a successful tool in resolving the armed conflict, it had the effect of constitutionalising ethnic cleavages. The state architecture distributed power across two ethnic entities: The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska – each with individual governmental structures but connected to the state level. The unintended effect may be institutional paralysis.

Bieber’s ⑭ institutional analysis depicts the current challenges in Bosnia not merely as the effect oflacking political will or episodic nationalist deadlock, but, instead, argues that Daytona froze wartime forces and translated them into the post-war institutions. His analysis notes the duplication of public sectors, veto structures, and ethnic political representation as key examples of this. Read in this lens, Bosnia’s fragmented sovereignty and institutional paralysis may depict more than residual conflict. Furthermore, it prompts questions of causality between frameworks and current administrative dysfunction. 

Chandler⑮ goes further, suggesting the internationally supervised democratisation in Bosnia may be producing informal statehood. The Office of High Representative in Bosnia is equipped with Bonn Powers⑯, authorising it to impose legislation and remove elected officials; this, Chandler ⑮ argues, was effective in preventing immediate collapse and ensuring short-term stability, but also depicts how ultimate authority does not reside wholly within Bosnian institutions. Naturally the internationally appointed official has served to mediate a polarised demographic, but this arrangement does give rise to questions: what is the effect of substituting local governance with external authority, on cultivating self-sustaining and legitimate institutions.

Beyond doctrinal analysis and potential administrative inefficiency, the implications of the current system on security are evident. Where vulnerabilities exist in the structure of the state, vacuums may arise, and state-adjacent actors may incrementally challenge authority. Republika Srpska has rejected court jurisdiction⑰, contested authority and made recurring assertions of cessation⑱. This could point to the long-term, unintended consequences of extending immediate post-conflict frameworks (intended to resolve armed attacks) into governance frameworks (intended to consolidate sovereignty and sustainable institutions). It also raises concerns about how slow erosion of institutional coherence and centralised authority may reinforce sovereignty gaps and lead to repeated conflict. 

Such discussions matter beyond Bosnia; the challenge posed here is how to adapt current frameworks, shifting focus away from maintaining a stable equilibrium and reorienting them toward solution. 

Conditional Sovereignty: Northern Kosovo and contested jurisdiction

Kosovo’s ambiguous sovereignty has been examined through a legal and doctrinal lens in section one, however an analytical analysis of the material effects of this arrangement is what follows. The governance consequences of Kosovo’s protested statehood are most visible in northern Kosovo where this has materialised into territorial and institutional competition. Beyond Mitrovica’s Ibër river, parallel institutions are funded by Serbia ⑲, operating across judicial, policing and administrative structures. In addition to this, EULEX and KFOR also operate within the space, each within their own frameworks producing layered jurisdictional orders and parallel chains of authority. 

This could be analysed as an administrative issue, but a multi-disciplinary approach could diagnose this outcome as a byproduct of the legitimacy deficit. When sovereign authority remains unconsolidated, territorial disputes persist, and multiple actors compete for authority over the same population and territory. The 2023 attack by Serbs on KFOR forces in Zvečan ⑳ and the killing of a Kosovo police officer in Banjska㉑, are two examples of how unresolved legitimacy translates into tangible security risk. 

Paris’ ㉒ conceptualisation of post-conflict peacebuilding can provide insights on what a move toward a solution-oriented framework should entail and why current layouts have proved so durable. By his account, peacebuilding prioritised political liberalisation processes before the requisite institutional consolidation occurred. Whether this is accurate is not the subject here, but adopting this lens can help diagnosis efforts: in Kosovo, the rule-of-law promotion headed by EULEX and subsequent technical dialogue on judicial reforms, took place in a context where the foundational question of sovereign authority – who governs, where and with whose legitimacy – remained unsettled. At first sight this may seem contradictory, yet one must also acknowledge that in post-conflict contexts, waiting for institutions and legitimacy to mature before building a governance framework would not serve effective either. Nonetheless, the line of thinking which argues that where stabilisation is established, consolidation will follow, seems – in Kosovo and Bosnia – to have kept the focus on the fragility of security not sovereignty and settlement. It would therefore suggest that further exploration of how contested sovereignty gives rise to parallel institutions, is warranted.

Therefore, one must look to the technical design of missions in Kosovo in order to understand why this focus on stability and sidelining of sovereignty may be feeding a self-perpetuating cycle of legitimacy deficits which enable parallel institutions and catalyse more insecurity. Caplan’s ㉓ work suggests that current observations are traceable to decisions made during the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Decisions on the relationship between self-determination and territorial integrity, about boundaries of successor states and the forms of international supervision, were made within a politically charged environment focused on preventing further escalation. Thus, the existence of parallel authority structures is endogenous to the recognition process.

A cyclic analogy comes to mind: the initially security issue was addressed, and subsequent clarifications of sovereignty were sidelined in the aims of maintaining this peace, yet the legitimacy gaps produced by this choice allowed vacuums to be filled by parallel institutions, giving rise to concerns regarding security. Does this illuminate the long-term costs of decisions which prioritised immediate security over solution? 

Taken together, Bosnia and Kosovo depict how unresolved sovereignty statuses do not remain confined to the remits of doctrine nor diplomacy but produce concrete institutional effects. Missions deployed to manage transition have done as intended, but have also left foundational questions open, the consequences of which may either reflect inherent limits of international law, as argued by Simpson⑬, or may provide insights into how post-conflict institution-building frameworks must be adapted.

The double-edged sword of deterrence and diplomacy

Conflict deterrence and diplomatic deferral of legitimacy are the two practices which have underpinned both international security missions and the application of law in our cases. Linking back to strategic ambiguity, Kosovo and Bosnia have depicted how deterrence and diplomacy can shape the structural tension between formal sovereign equality and practical realities of hybrid governance arrangements. 

Within the overarching frameworks of deterrence and diplomacy, KFOR and EULEX remain in Kosovo, EUFOR Althea and the OHR remain in Bosnia. In both contexts these missions were conceived with the understanding they would be transitional, yet their longevity speaks to how an architecture of external stabilisation has become a structural feature of the political landscape, less than a temporary mechanism aimed at a clear endpoint.

In his analysis of Kosovo, Hehir ㉔ may point to a pattern: where external legitimacy shapes institutions more than domestic ownership, it can substitute the development of capacity instead of producing it. Thus, if missions are aimed at institution building and sovereign consolidation, the creation of diffused authority and dependency may be counterintuitive. Whilst the positive implications of external security guarantees are clear, forward-thinking discussions must be had about whether the current mechanisms can provide settlements. Otherwise, we may risk reversing the work done over the past decades.

Whilst the paths taken by Bosnia and Kosovo are evidently different, some common denominator must be connected to the self-perpetuating cycle that has been created through the attempts to maintain order. The logic is that deterrence provides stability and diplomacy provides movement, however, maybe a reorientation of next steps is necessary to prevent the cost of non-resolution from being incurred in the future. 

Conclusion

This piece has not aimed to resolve conflicts in international law, state building or post-conflict governance; nor has it aimed to prescribe the normative functions of international actors and missions, but rather to analytically map the consequences of legal limbo, external security guarantees and post-conflict governance. The piece has considered arguments that Bosnia and Kosovo reflect a structural gap between the normative ideals of international law and the practical realities of politics; it has also considered Kosovo and Bosnia as products of structural design. Two questions remain: first, what may efforts toward clarity and autonomy look like and how can actors orient towards it; and second, what do these two cases show us about the direction post-conflict sovereignty is taking and the sustainability of such arrangements. 

Sources 

① Decision No. 1/2024, « Decision of the Joint Committee of the Central European Free Trade Agreement » Joint Committee CEFTA, 9 October 2024

② Stefano Fella, « Kosovo: developments since 1999 and relations with Serbia », House of Commons Library, 29 April 2024.

③Marko Prelec, « Bosnia in Deadlock as Serbs Strain for Exit », International Crisis Group, 11 June 2025.

④ United Nations, « General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dayton Agreement) », United Nations, 21 November 1995.

⑤ SHAPE NATO, « Berlin Plus Agreement Operation Althea », NATO, 2017.

⑥ Office of High Representative, « MANDATE », Office of High Representative Bosnia, 2015.

⑦ Security Council, « Report of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Kosovo’s future status », United Nations, 26 March 2007.

⑧ KFOR, « NATO's role in Kosovo », NATO, 09 February 2026.

⑨ European Union Mission in Kosovo,« MANDATE », EULEX, June 2010.

⑩ Seventh International Conference of American States, « Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of the State », Seventh International Conference of American States, 26 December 1934.

⑪ James Crawford,« The Creation of States in International Law », Oxford University Press, 1 September 2007. 

⑫ International Court of Justice,« Advisory Opinion - Accordance with international law of the unilateral declaration of independence in respect of Kosovo », International Court of Justice, 22 July 2010.

⑬ Gerry Simpson, « Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order », Cambridge University Press , 5 July 2009.

⑭ Florian Bieber, « Post-War Bosnia: Ethnicity, Inequality and Public Sector Governance », Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

⑮ David Chandler, « Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton », Pluto Press, 1999.

⑯ Office of High Representative, « Bonn Powers », Office of High Representative Bosnia, 12 October 1997.

⑰ European Western Balkans, « BiH in crisis after Republika Srpska adopts law rejecting Constitutional Court decisions », European Western Balkans, 4 July 2023.

⑱ Stefano Fella,« Bosnia and Herzegovina: secessionism in the Republika Srpska », House of Commons Library, 12 December 2025.

⑲ Department of Human Rights and Rule of Law,« Parallel Structures in Kosovo », Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Mission in Kosovo, October 2003.

⑳ European Western Balkans,« NATO expects Serbia to ensure accountability for the Banjska attack », European Western Balkans, 27 January 2026.

㉑ The Diplomatic Service of the European Union Press Team, « Kosovo: Statement by the High Representative Josep Borrell on the attack against Kosovo Police », European Union External Action, 24 September 2023.

㉒ Roland Paris, « At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict, Cambridge University Press », 5 September 2012.

㉓ Richard Caplan, « Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia », Cambridge University Press, 22 September 2009.

㉔ Aidan Hehir, « Kosovo, Intervention and Statebuilding: The International Community and the Transition to Independence », Taylor and Francis Group, 21 January 2010.