Efficient Anarchy? Perceptions on Kosovo's Parallel State System (1991-1999)

• In Event: States, Local Communities and Informal Institutions in Eastern Europe and Russia

Abstract

After their complete exclusion from Serbian-controlled local institutions (schools, hospitals, enterprises) in 1991, Kosovar Albanians established a ‘parallel state’ with a president, government, legislature, and informal institutions of extraction/taxation and redistribution/public goods provision coordinated under the aegis of the Central Council for Financing in Kosovo (KQFK). After the 1999 NATO intervention and subsequent UN Trusteeship (1999-2007), in 2008 Kosovo became independent and displayed the formal institutions associated with sovereign statehood. This paper presents the results of a recent nationally representative survey on Kosovars' perceptions of the accountability, effectiveness, and transparency of informal 'parallel state' institutions during the 1990s (1991-1999) vs. formal Kosovar institutions after independence (after 2008). The Kosovo case approximates a natural experiment: the population includes individuals who have been exposed to both the informal (the 'treatment’) and formal structures of governance, as well as individuals who have been exposed only to the formal structures of governance after 2008. The findings suggest that informal, 'parallel state' institutions are perceived to have been more accountable, more effective, and more transparent than formal state institutions. The study has important implications for research on the social efficiency of nonstate vs. state institutions.

Author

• Adrian Florea, University of Glasgow