Exploring local compliance with peacebuilding reforms: legitimacy, coercion and reward-seeking in police reform in Kosovo

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores why local police officers choose to comply or to resist the police reforms stipulated by an international peacebuilding mission operating in their country. In order to understand the role and impact of local agency and shine light on local actors’ compliance decisions, this article analyses two examples of police reform of the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo. This article makes three contributions to the peacebuilding and compliance literatures. First, it formulates and tests causal mechanisms showing exactly how local actors’ motivations for compliance – legitimacy, coercion and reward-seeking – are causally linked to compliance. Second, it shows that legitimacy, coercion, and reward-seeking do not influence compliance directly, but only through the hypothesised intervening variables. Finally demonstrates that while legitimacy matters to local compliance choices, it does so only in specific contexts and situations.