Competing Sovereignties

Competing Sovereignties: Parallel States, Public Services, and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Kosovo examines thirty years of parallel state competition in Kosovo, exploring how ordinary people navigate between rival authorities when multiple states compete for their loyalty through the provision of essential public services.

In Kosovo's remote villages, children attend separate classrooms under different flags, representing competing educational systems from two states that deny each other's existence. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and over 100 interviews, the book examines this parallel state competition in Kosovo. First during the 1990s Albanian resistance movement operating underground beneath Serbian rule, then after 1999 when ethnic Serbs established their own parallel institutions alongside the emerging Kosovo state. The book reveals how different services, such as education, healthcare, and justice, carry distinct political profiles that shape citizen choices in fundamentally different ways. Individual decision-making is influenced by two key factors: the specific characteristics of each service (whether technical or symbolic, individual or collective) and the degree of group solidarity within communities. Through detailed analysis of how Albanians and Serbs have chosen between competing schools, hospitals, and courts, the book demonstrates that the real competition for legitimacy in contested territories is fought through governance, not guns. It challenges conventional assumptions about state-building and citizen loyalty, showing how people tactically navigate between authorities based on complex calculations involving quality, trust, identity, and social pressure.

Providing a nuanced understanding of how people experience and respond to competing political authorities in their everyday lives, Competing Sovereignties will be of great interest to political scientists, historians, and sociologists interested in state formation, nationalism, and conflict resolution. Scholars of international development, peace and conflict studies, and Balkan politics will find valuable insights into how parallel governance structures function in practice. The book also offers important lessons for policymakers and practitioners working in contested territories.