The moulding of a functioning education system is a key challenge for new states emerging from armed conflict. Existing research on the education-war relationship leaves no doubts about the salience of education in post-conflict reconstruction. However, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the complex relationship between education and statebuilding. This paper seeks to address this gap, first by examining local and international agendas that have shaped Kosovo’s education sector in a context of international statebuilding intervention; second, it looks into the role and functions that different actors expect education to perform in the new political order; third, it analyses the peace(building) process and the nature of the state that is reflected in and built through education. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2013, the paper highlights how the governance of educational reform in Kosovo challenges state-centric power perspectives: education is strategically shaped in the interaction between local and international actors.
