Trading with the enemy in Mitrovica, Kosovo. - RUhosting

4. Trade encourages the broader expansion of economic ties.” (Blanton, 2006)
Trade has more qualities than just economics, it has cultural spillovers and leads to an exchange of ideas
which can play an important role in the creation of a security community. Because of this the influence of
trade on cooperation and conflict is much larger than just the exchange of money and goods. This means that
the real influence of trade on (political) relations may be less shaped by trade volume and more so by the
interactions and transactions that are accompanied by trade (Blanton, 2006). Blanton's results seem to
confirm this, as trade was a good indicator of economic and cultural transactions and correlated with other
interactions on a cultural level such as student exchanges and tourist flows. On top of that trade positively
determined the frequency of economic and military cooperation, and with this trade could provide a
foundation for cooperation on both economic and strategic issues.
When these theories are applied to Kosovo, a few problems arise. The Kantian peace theory is about interstate
relations and although it's evidence makes the notion “trade brings peace” very believable, my research
is about trade between ethnic groups, not states. In the specific case of Kosovo and Mitrovica, this is not a
complete distinction as in some ways the relations between Albanians and Serbs in Mitrovica are more interstate
like than one might expect. First, Albanians consider the Pristina-based Kosovar government to be the
legal entity in Kosovo and this is where their loyalties lie. The government considered legal by most Serbs
living in Kosovo is still their Serbian government in Belgrade. So, while the two ethnic groups live in the
same country (be it Kosovo or Serbia) they pledge allegiance to different governments. Second and more
specific for Mitrovica, there's the territorial aspect. The jurisdiction of the Kosovar government officially
(from a Kosovar perspective) ends at Kosovo's border with Serbia, but in practise it ends at the river Ibar
right in Mitrovica. The Serbs north of the river Ibar still live in an area of Kosovo where the jurisdiction of
Belgrade is much stronger than that of Pristina. When looked at it this way, it's as if both communities do
live in different countries with the river Ibar in Mitrovica as its border.
So there are inter-state factors present in the relations between Albanians and Serbs in Mitrovica, but these
are still ethnic groups and not states by themselves. This means the Kantian Peace cannot be expected to
apply directly to this case. Since there has been no research so far that tried to apply the trade aspect of the
Kantian Peace theory on ethnic groups, strong predictions based on scientific evidence cannot be made
before the research is conducted. These predictions will be difficult to make even after the research is
conducted since it is based on interviews. But this is not the goal of the this thesis. Its goal is to explore, from
a practical point of view if inter-ethnic trade can improve relations, and from a theoretical point of view to
what extend the trade element from the Kantian Peace Theory can also be applied to ethnic groups. For
exploring this theoretical objective, Kosovo is a good place to start. The idea to apply the "trade brings
peace" theory on ethnic groups may be new and untested, but in Kosovo the difference between states and
ethnic groups is less big than in many other conflicts so it does not trail too far from the original Kantian
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