“Kosovo’s Democracy at risk?” is the next paper launched today by the Democracy for Development (D4D) Institute.

The author of this paper, Dr. Besnik Pula, addressed three concerning areas for Kosovo’s democratic development: the stability and duration of governments, the electoral instability and the length of these processes, including the negotiation and formation of post-election governing coalitions.

So far, Kosovo’s governments have been short-lived, being that since the declaration of independence they have failed to complete the mandate until the end and therefore going for early elections. The study also draws attention to the need for more policymaking capacities within political parties in order to orient bargaining over coalition formation towards programmatic goals and policy directions as opposed to the division of the spoils of political power, as has been the trend in recent years.

In the panel of the launching conference were Arben Qirezi, Jehona Lushaku and Naim Rashiti, with moderation of Krenar Gashi. They analysed and commented on the work from their point of view, highlighting the legal and constitutional framework that make the system totally dysfunctional and bring institutional crisis to Kosovo. In addition to this, one of the main problems of political parties was highlighted to be the lack of structuring in ideological aspects, as well as the non-definition of political programs.

Some of the recommendations in the paper are:

• Kosovo parties must amend Article 67 of Kosovo’s constitution which allows a non-majoritarian party to control and potentially block the process of constituting an Assembly after elections.
• Kosovo parties should be more cognizant of the need to be respectful of basic democratic norms during sensitive processes of transfer of power after elections.
• Part of the problem in bargaining over coalitions after elections is the tendency to focus on the division of political spoils, including high level political posts, including their artificial expansion in order to satisfy various factions and clientelistic constituencies.
• Political actors should use time in opposition to direct their political organizations towards building long-term strategic programs and policies rather than consider that these critical aspects of politics can be left to chance and improvisation and considered important only after the party has entered government.

This publication is realized with support of the project Democratic Society Promotion (DSP) – financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (DANIDA) and managed by the Kosovar Civil Society Foundation (KCSF).