Staking claims: Hybrid governance and state-making on the North Kosovo frontier

Abstract

This article examines how state and non-state actors claim public authority in areas of contested sovereignty. It develops the concept of the frontier as a point of departure. As zonal spaces of weakly established or overlapping authority, frontiers have historically been sites of collaboration between state and non-state actors. Extending the concept to shed light on contemporary forms of state and non-state governing arrangements, I argue that frontiers can be can also be analysed across specific domains of public authority. I highlight three domains in particular: the symbolic domain, where the state is imagined as a collective actor; the contractual domain, which depends on the use of public services to establish a social contract; and the protective domain, the classic Hobbesian justification for the state as a provider of security. Applying the frontier framework to North Kosovo, I argue that Serbia has sustained a near monopoly over the symbolic and contractual domains in the contested region yet is severely constrained in the protective domain. As a result, Belgrade has relied on outsourcing authority to local illicit actors to maintain leverage. However, these actors have also carved out their own autonomous forms of authority and actively manipulate the ambiguous political boundaries in North Kosovo to their advantage.