What makes the ‘success’ of property restitution in post-war Kosovo? And what can the transformations of rule of law through institutional practice illuminate about broader tendencies in international interventionism? Daily practices at the Kosovo Property Agency (KPA, the administrative, quasi-judicial institution tasked by the United Nations with post-war property restitution) reveal the runaway effect of the growing bureaucratization of international human rights: institutional success is measured through neoliberal ‘technologies of accountability’ and the project itself becomes the key outcome. This is the result of a paradigm shift in global development that saw the legalization of property rights as cornerstone of post-conflict state-building. A parallel shift towards managerialism and auditability in public sector management has given rise to demands for efficiency and accountability in transnational institutions. Together, these moves, which found fertile ground in Kosovo’s reconstruction process and determined the mandate and institutional set-up of property restitution, transform rule of law from an idealized public good to a box-ticking exercise chiefly concerned with the production of measurable returns.

Agathe Mora is a lecturer (equivalent to assistant professor) in anthropology and international development at the University of Sussex. She is also an editor (formerly editor-in-chief) at Allegralaboratory.net and a research associate at the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Mora conducts research within international human rights organizations in Kosovo, the EU and the UN. In 2015, she was awarded the Arthur Maurice Hocart Prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. She previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and a research fellowship at the Department of Law and Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.