I worked seven years in the OSCE missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. In the last stage, I was Deputy Director of the Democratization Department with OmiK/UNMiK pillar III. Accordingly, he dealt intensively with the practical questions of human rights, democratisation and the transfer of responsibilities in internationally administered territories. I returned with a lot of questions. Some of those now form the basis of my research for a PhD thesis on Municipal Governance in Kosovo. I have happily accepted the GLJ’s invitation to write a review of two recently issued books, Michaela Salamun’s Democratic Governance in International Territorial Administration and Daniel Sven Smyrek`s Internationally Administered Territories - International Protectorates? The authors focus on different questions, yet they unavoidably touch upon each other in the topics which personally interest me the most. This made it intriguing to read their works in tandem.

In the first chapter of her dissertation submitted to the university of Graz, Austria, Michaela Salamun aims to “establish the reasons for why governance in such territories has been based on democratic principles only in part.” In chapter two she deals with the legal framework in historic and contemporary International Territorial Administration (ITAs) examining the scope of the authority of governance of the international administrations versus the scope of the authority of the local institutions. In chapter three, she looks at the democratic substance of these documents. She concludes with a final chapter providing proposals for the improvement of the democratic quality of international administrations.

Smyrek, after an introduction, examines the “notion of sovereignty.” In his third chapter, he runs through the historical examples of ITA, establishing their sovereignty status. He dedicates a chapter to Kosovo alone. In his chapter E he reflects on “democracy and international administration of territories,” using what he collected en route while following the red line of his analysis.  In chapter F he...