Peacebuilding and Local Ownership: Post-Conflict Consensus-Building

This book explores the meaning of local ownership in peacebuilding and examines the ways in which it has been, and could be, operationalized in post-conflict environments.

In the context of post-conflict peacebuilding, the idea of local ownership is based upon the premise that no peace process is sustainable in the absence of a meaningful degree of local involvement. Despite growing recognition of the importance of local ownership, however, relatively little attention has been paid to specifying what precisely the concept means or how it might be implemented.

This volume contributes to the ongoing debate on the future of liberal peacebuilding through a critical investigation of the notion of local ownership, and challenges conventional assumptions about who the relevant locals are and what they are expected to own. Drawing on case studies from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, the text argues that local ownership can only be fostered through a long-term consensus-building process, which involves all levels of the conflict-affected society.

This book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, development studies, security studies and IR.

Timothy Donais is Associate Professor of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. His current research focuses on post-conflict peacebuilding. He is the author of The Political Economy of Peacebuilding in Post-Dayton Bosnia (Routledge, 2005) and, more recently, the editor of Local Ownership and Security Sector Reform (Lit Verlag, 2008).