The Politics of Policy Resistance: Reconstructing Higher Education in Kosovo

This article considers attempts to incorporate lessons and transfer policies from Britain in the reconstruction of Higher Education in Kosovo after 1999. In doing so, it employs aspects of the lesson-drawing framework developed by Rose (1991 and 2001) and the related concepts of policy transfer and policy diffusion. Drawing on contributions from anthropology and democratization studies, we suggest development of the public policy frameworks for lesson drawing and policy transfer in circumstances characterised by asymmetric interdependence, in which the tactics and strategies of policy resistance by ‘subordinate’ recipient actors can be crucial. This article details the nature of policy resistance and sets out hypotheses for future research. While concepts such as globalisation and interdependence are contested within academe, there is consensus that national boundaries are subject to increasing penetration both materially and ideologically and ideas and practices are transferred from one place to another. This is most notable in the public policy literature, with the conceptual developments of lesson-drawing, policy transfer and policy diffusion. These concepts were developed and have been applied to cases where the transmission process has been largely horizontal across independent states. Lessons are also drawn and policies transferred and diffused where there is ‘external’ pressure on state actors to adopt particular policies. This may be evident where states have pooled sovereignty (e.g., the European Union) or are subject to pressure from international agreements (e.g. World Trade Organisation, global environmental protocols). It is certainly the case in post-conflict societies where international institutions and agencies are directing change and, in particular, where change is associated with external attempts to democratize states. This process is increasingly common, as democratization has become ‘a genuinely global aspiration’ (Grugel, 2002: 239). In this Ian Bache and Andrew Taylor 280 process, the power relationship between the ‘donor’ and the ‘recipient’ is characterized by asymmetric interdependence, with the former possessing more key power resources: political, legal, financial, organisational and informational. We argue that in the context of asymmetric interdependence there is a need for the public policy literature to hypothesize the dynamics of relationships between the ‘dominant donors’ of ideas and practices and the ‘subordinate recipients’. In particular, there is a need to theorise the nature and intensity of domestic resistance to external policy inputs. In developing the idea of policy resistance we have drawn on relevant literature from anthropology and democratization studies. The collective insights gained are then applied to the case study of the role played by British actors in the reconstruction of higher education (HE) in Kosovo following the end of the war there in 1999. We conclude by developing hypotheses for the future study of policy resistance. I Theoretical Development In broad terms it is useful to distinguish between voluntaristic and coercive lesson-drawing/policy transfer. In the former, supply is a function of demand: if a country wants to do so, it will take a lesson. In the latter, demand is a function of supply: if a powerful international organisation makes a condition, then the country is obliged to take it.