Case studies / Comment
Can Democratic Elections Solve a Civil War? The case of Serbia and Kosovo
18/07/2007 By Susan Woodward
For more than six months until May 2007, negotiations to settle the status of Kosovo were stalled because the United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari and his diplomatic team in Vienna agreed to the requests from Serbian prime minister Vojislav Koštunica.
First, for a delay of several months in the fall of 2006, long after Ahtisaari’s initial negotiations deadline, so that Serbia could adopt a new constitution and hold parliamentary elections (although whether and when to do each had already been a subject of debate for several years in Serbian political circles).
And second, for another four months after those elections in January 2007 while party leaders bargained up to the very last moment before a constitutional limitation would have required new elections over the formation of a new government.
Despite genuine concern that the previous prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, would ally with nationalists on the left and the right, Europe breathed a sigh of relief in May when the two parties of the previous government completed their complex negotiations over the distribution of ministries and continued the centrist, ostensibly pro-European coalition of 2004-07.
Once this Government was installed, however, the hopes for a rapid resolution in the United Nations Security Council, where negotiations over the Ahtisaari Plan moved in March, proved wrong.
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Keywords
Conflict resolution Elections Serbia UN Western BalkansBio author: Susan Woodward
Professor of Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. A specialist on the Balkans, her current research focuses on transitions from war to peace, state failure, and post-war state-building.
