A growing literature on hybrid peace governance has showed the importance of taking into account the interactive nature of peacebuilding. However, this literature largely remains imprecise about how local-international interactions affect outcomes, and the hybrid turn has not produced much comparative empirical evidence. This study attempts to contribute to filling this research gap by developing a causal explanation for why micro-level local-international interactions produce within-country variations in post-war democratization. Based on scholarship on strategic bargaining, local ownership and legitimacy, it is hypothesized that a higher prevalence of legitimate local-international partnerships leads to higher adherence to good governance principles. The study uses key informant interviews and survey data to conduct a qualitative most-similar case study at the sub-national level. From the analysis of three municipalities in Kosovo, some support for the hypothesis is generated. The results show that with increased capacity from international support and legitimacy derived from closeness to citizens, local non-political actors can put pressure on political actors to reform. However, more studies are needed to refine the theory and test its applicability in other contexts.

Abstract The international UN-led peacebuilding mission MINUSMA has been deployed in Mali since 2013 and was initially rather successful. The mission managed to support the government with stabilization and a peace agreement that ended the conflict between the north and the south. However, since 2017 the situation has deteriorated in the presence of MINUSMA. Violence has escalated and several new communal conflicts have emerged primarily in the central regions where Islamist groups have gained ground, and there have been two more coup d’états and the government have been carrying out human rights violations against civilians. By 2023 the people of Mali and the current military government has demanded the mission to withdraw and leave the country. This study set out to understand why civilians oppose international peacebuilding and made a comparative case study of three regions in Mali, Koulikoro in the south, Mopti in the central and Gao in northeastern Mali looking at how opposition against MINUSMA has changed between 2017-2020. The study found that reasons for opposition are multilayered and stem from both historical and contemporary events and experiences. Moreover, the study found that despite substantial research on the importance of including civil society in peacebuilding processes, most civilians, groups and communities have been left out of the peace process and instead the approach has been mainly top-down with MINUSMA supporting the Malian government. The problematic aspect of this is that the government did not support its own people. The study suggest that international peacebuilding must be more context-sensitive and understand the history and root causes of the conflicts to successfully support a country with peacebuilding in order to avoid a situation where the civilian population oppose the mission instead of being included, engaged and committed to the peace process.

Despite the increasingly common situation of statelessness in the contemporary Middle East, a majority of the theoretical tools used to study nationalism are contingent upon the existence of a sovereign state. As such, they are unable to fully explain the mechanisms of national identity, political participation, and integration in non-institutional contexts, where other social identities continue to play a significant political role. In these contexts, the position of demographic minorities in society is significant, as actors with the most popular support –majorities -- tend to have the strongest impact on the shape of the political field. This thesis demonstrates what we can learn from studying the mechanisms of nationalism and political participation for one such minority group, the Palestinian Christians, particularly with regards to how national identity fails or succeeds in instilling attachment to the state and society. This is accomplished by applying the theoretical framework of social identity theory to empirical field research conducted in the West Bank in 2014, combined with an analysis of election and survey data. It is argued that the level of attachment individuals feel towards the “state” or confessional communities is dependent on the psychological or material utility gained from group membership. If individuals feel alienated from the national identity, they are more likely to identify with their confessional community. If they are alienated from both, then they are far likelier to emigrate. Additionally, I suggest that the way in which national identity is negotiated in a stateless context is important to future state building efforts, as previous attempts to integrate national minorities into the political system through, e.g., devolved parliaments and quotas, have failed to instil a universal sense of the nation.