Practicality by judgement: transnational interpreters of local ownership in the Polish-Ukrainian border reform encounter

Abstract

Local ownership has become a central norm of international statebuilding while its practice is seen as failure. This is explained either as an instance of organised hypocrisy where the norm is de facto circumvented or, in a critical vein, as a hegemonic projection of the neoliberal system of governance which by default erases local agency. Practitioners of statebuilding are seen as agents of moulding; social engineers in the policy discourse or conduits of the discursive structure from which they derive their ‘professional reflex’ and authority in the critical discourse. This article suggests that both designations misdiagnose the problem of action as being ‘caused’ by either norm transfer, or by norms being ‘ingrained’ in professional practices. It adopts a micro-perspective on the practice of embedded experts in a series of EU-sponsored projects to offer a contextual account of an on-the-ground interaction. The encounter between Polish and Ukrainian border guards highlights differential power relations and demonstrates the rich texture of the semantic field of ‘local ownership’. The case nuances arguments about tacit institutional reproduction in transnational settings and the automaticity of norm diffusion among security professionals to illustrate instead a contingent role of ‘practicality by judgement’ in their action.