External interventions in legal reforms within post-conflict territories have increased significantly since the mid-1990s. A variety of international legal experts are today engaged in law-drafting, constitution-making and adjudicating to 'promote the rule of law’. Often, when external actors organize the legal, the domestic, democratic legislative decision-making is subdued and the task of defining and drafting legal norms lies within transnational bureaucratic settings of bi- and multilateral donors. The paper will advance the argument that when law organizes the political under the condition of the absence of domestic political contestation (the limited participation of the domestic legislature and civil society in law-making), the rule of law as a fundamental norm is consequently contested. This is due not only to the lack of domestic contestation in the law-making process, but also the challenge this process represents to the rule of law’s constitutive function in the distinction between law and politics. The constitution of the rule of law in post-war Kosovo by international experts represents an interesting case of normative contestation. Since 1999 and until today, international legal experts have been engaged in drafting Kosovo’s constitution and laws. The paper draws on almost 80 narrative interviews with UN and EU advisors conducted during an extensive fieldwork in Kosovo, participant observation of the recent constitution-drafting process in Kosovo and a contextual analysis of relevant documents as to identify the micro-processes in which norm contestation takes place. Whilst norm contestation has been theorized as being constitutive of norm acceptance and legitimacy (Wiener 2008), the paper will argue that, in the case of Kosovo, the lack of domestic political contestation challenges the thesis that norm contestation and acceptance are mutually constitutive. The paper aims at identifying conditions and types of contestation to advance the argument that norm acceptance and legitimacy depend on the type of contestation.
