Abstract Obviously, inside mediation through individuals or institutions emerged from the conflict situations becomes an alternative way to end armed conflict as it is regarded to have more local legitimacy with a higher sense of ownership. Surprisingly, researchers in peace and conflict studies have shown more interest to mediation processes dominated by outside mediators, while little has been known about the conditions that contribute to success of inside mediators. This thesis aims to contribute to this understudied research field by answering the question; under what conditions do mediators contribute to the ending of armed conflict in fragile states? In this thesis, I focus on the role of customary leaders, a form of inside mediators. The point of departure of this research question will be the distinction between the mediator’s involvements (Inside vs outside) and how their presence contribute to different outcomes. The variances will be explained with reference to two contending concepts of success and failure of mediation process. Success of mediators’ involvement can be measured by focusing on the following three areas; the initiation of peace process, conclusion of peace process and the sustainability of peace outcomes. The causal argument suggest that mediation processes dominated by inside mediators are more likely to end armed conflicts, as they have  more local legitimacy that can  engender a higher level of ownership, and sustain peace agreements as the actors feel engaged to the peace process. By testing this theory, this thesis applies the structured focused comparison method by selecting three cases of Southern, northwest and northeast regions in Somalia that have developed differently. The empirical findings of this thesis supports the hypothesis testes, as mediation processes dominated by inside mediators in Northeast and Northwest regions displayed a higher level of local ownership and legitimacy than the Southern regions. Finally, further researches on inside mediators success in a different countries is suggested in the future in order to know the level of inside mediators’ effectiveness in ending armed conflict.

The wind power increase of Gotland as well as other parts of Sweden during the last ten year period has meant that this renewable energy source has increased its share over other fossil sources. The year of 2011 became the first when the wind power produced more energy than an average nuclear reactor. Now that wind power is in an expansive phase, the land issue will be of great interest. Land with good wind resources will be of interest to wind energy developers.  The problems that this essay is based on are; how can landowners altering the economic conditions at a wind power establishment? What opportunities and obstacles exist for landowners who choose to set up wind power on their land? The purpose of this essay is to highlight the economic conditions that exist for landowners for the establishment of wind farms, with regard to compensation for the leasing and return on invested capital. The authors will also clarify the difficulties and opportunities arising from the process at an imaginary wind power establishment, which have emerged through interviews and research articles. The primary sources consist of interviews with actors for a planned wind farm in southeast Gotland, as well as representatives of a trade association of companies working with wind power. Interviews were also made with a bank, where the experience in question funding for wind energy has been important for our problem as well with a wind turbine manufacturer for real facts about wind turbines.  Landowner’s interest in wind energy as a long term investment has in Lau on Gotland resulted in a project where local landowners have chosen to form a joint company to invest in a wind farm, with the goal that the park generally will be owned by local residents in the parish. Conclusions to be drawn from this study is that landowners who form a joint company, in this case Lau Wind AB will open an opportunity for landowners to take a larger share of the ownership and profits as wind power turbines on their land supplies. But also for locals who have opportunity to become owners of the wind through the purchase of shares in wind farm.

Series: Research Reports / RICC

In 1996, Guatemala achieved peace after 36 years of civil war which took root in the political and social oppression of the country’s vast indigenous population. To counter the country’s widespread poverty, inequality and ongoing political and social frustrations the Guatemalan government adopted a liberal peace building agenda by ‘globalizing’ its economy and by decentralizing the political and economic process. Through this process, Guatemala has achieved a democracy which is accepted by western standards as well as the classification of a middle income country. However, the vast, and predominately rural, indigenous population has been left behind in this progress; it is estimated that 7 out 10 indigenous Guatemalans today are facing more or less severe livelihood conditions below the poverty line, why Guatemala remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. The government now hopes to overcome the shortcomings in the rural sector by stimulating local agricultural projects and ideas which are anchored in the many and various territorially strengths and challenges throughout Guatemala’s countryside; the intention is, in other words, to encourage a stronger local control over the development process.This study explores the conditions for, and the relevance of, local ownership of development in terms of livelihood improvements in Yalambojoch, one indigenous agriculture community in one of the poorest and most war torn regions in Guatemala. An abductive field work with a holistic livelihood-approach has been necessary in order to localize more or less obvious factors that are trapping the village in poverty, and to understand to what degree poverty is determined by the village’s level of autonomy, or ownership, over its development process. The results shows that the village's low livelihood level is determined by agricultural insufficiency, poor access to crucial services and political and socio economic isolation. The village's empowerment is restricted to protection of territory, which reproduces a context in which a more participant autonomy in a wider societal setting is thwarted, where external development projects are often reluctantly rejected due to local mistrust, frustration and discontentment with governmental as well as private agencies and where the livelihood situation consequently remains essentially static.

Academic research on peacebuilding, without the keywords ‘local’ or ‘ownership’, has become almost unthinkable nowadays. This thesis aims to contribute to current debates by offering insight into discursive and practical meanings of local elites’ strategies to actively seek and utilize diaspora’s capacity to help their own position in the peacebuilding ownership configuration. It focuses on examination of the local ‘elite self-empowerment’ through power-sharing arrangements with diaspora that can further offer a deeper understanding of how local ownership of peacebuilding is articulated and operationalized in a post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina.This is a case-oriented comparative study, which combines comparative methods and Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) tools. Ideal-type and fsQCA are used for creating empirical typologies, as well as a systematic analysis of selected conditions across investigated mono- and multiethnic sets of cases. Comparative methods are used for their further juxtaposition and finding similarities between individual cases belonging to the same group, and identifying overall differences between groups. The thesis demonstrates that overwhelming success of the Bosnian diaspora in the economic sphere can be an excellent indicator of their overall capacity to contribute to other areas of post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. Elite-driven inclusion of conflict-generated diaspora, as an agent of peacebuilding, contributes to more successful dynamics and management of the process, which as a result can advance local elites’ share in ‘owning’ the process. There are several types of diaspora incorporation strategies in local peacebuilding frameworks, which are shaped and embedded in the local contexts; variations amongst them depend on factors that are not ethnically-based but rather rationalist in their conception; incorporation of diaspora is perceived as a viable alternative to externally-led peacebuilding and has the potential of overcoming the post-conflict democratic transformation fatigue that currently exists in the country.Even though a core building-block of any study of diaspora is the diasporic community itself, this study is not focused on examining their actions or patterns of behavior. This thesis is about exploring and testing alliance-building strategies of local elites towards diaspora communities, a craft that has yet to be mastered. Currently, diasporas are considered as ‘resources’ or ‘tools’ for their countries of origin, not as genuine partners. This work shows that homeland local governments, need to avoid making assumptions of an inherent diasporic ‘obligation to help’, especially in post-conflict reconstruction, and must work instead on developing local strategies of diaspora incorporation in order to profit from their involvement and enhance their local peacebuilding capacities.There exists a growing interest in inspecting the roles of diaspora groups in the countries and regions of their origins, yet scholarly work on Bosnian diaspora’s political involvement in BiH is extremely limited. This study focuses on elites’ perceptions of diaspora’s role as an agent; it examines types of specific positioning locals have towards their potential engagement, and how it all impacts dynamics of the entire peacebuilding process. Exploring different venues for co-option of Bosnian diaspora on a local level opens up and attracts new theoretical meanings to local ownership in peacebuilding processes. Research findings indicate that developing transnational management policies to attract diaspora’s engagement, through sharing decision-making powers on a local level, can contribute to compensating for shortcomings that locals have been unable to overcome in the past to advance their ownership position in the peacebuilding process. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This research seeks to study the peacebuilding strategies used in South Sudan. It is interested in the interaction between the liberal peacebuilding framework and the “local turn” as manifested in the strategy adopted by peacebuilding organisations in Africa. The local turn and local ownership only enjoy rhetorical acceptance and prove to be challenging to operationalise. This research critically analyses the ideological policies and implementation impact of strategies used, especially relating to the inclusion as well as the exclusion of “the local”. As local ownership in peace processes is essential in ensuring sustainability, the research is interested in the position that the “local” voices and “local” peace actors occupy in post-independence peace strategies and policies employed mainly through the liberal framework in South Sudan. It is in the light of the top-down liberal peacebuilding framework that this research provides an analysis of the bottom-up strategies that can be identified in the case of South Sudan. The research will thus identify types of discourses, beliefs, practices and ideologies that have been adopted in South Sudan’s peacebuilding interventions by both the local and external actors and their implications. Using the different strategies employed by the external and internal peace actors as a unit of analysis, the research will aim to find out how the peace strategies employed in South Sudan include “the local” approach, how local and external actors interact and the implications of this relationship for peace in South Sudan. This research employs a critical theory approach to analyse the inclusion of “the local” in peacebuilding and the existing relationship between the liberal peacebuilding framework and the local turn. This will be done using a qualitative approach and a phenomenological design. Since the current strategies do not exist in a vacuum, historical process tracing will be conducted to understand and evaluate the effect and the change of strategies employed by external and internal actors in the past and possible current implications. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Political Sciences / PhD / Unrestricted

The thesis based on analysis of international community peacebuilding policy and consequent reaction by local actors assesses the influence of this interaction onto the liberal peace and changes in missions' operation. The extent of local ownership and the real agency of local actors is then dependent on the time of mission occurrence, power related interests of international community and the force and accessibility of structures that the international community tries to influence. Key words: peacebuilding, hybridization, local ownership, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone

The thesis based on analysis of international community peacebuilding policy and consequent reaction by local actors assesses the influence of this interaction onto the liberal peace and changes in missions' operation. In accordance with O. Richmond the conclusion of post-liberal peace coming to the fore is accepted if only in contextually based forms. The extent of local ownership and the real agency of local actors is then dependent on the time of mission occurrence, power related interests of international community and the force and accessibility of structures that the international community tries to influence. Key words: peacebuilding, hybridization, local ownership, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone

In recent years in many sectors the trend seemed to be to rationalise and increase efficiency toensure processes deliver the best possible outcome with the least required input. In a goaloriented and fast paced world, this seems to be a logic step. But what if the individual factorsfor reaching a goal are not known, acknowledged, or simply not respected? What if it occursthat not all actors seem to have understood where the journey should take them? Who takes adecision to hopefully achieve a state of self-sufficiency within the beneficiary community andtherefore resulting long-term sustainability of development interventions?These and some more questions are being touched in the following thesis as the phenomena ofsustainable development and its’ effects and outcomes are researched. The thesis is based onan extensive and critical review of academic work on different steps along the way of theimplementation of development work. To understand the challenges happening afterwithdrawal of external funding, it is crucial to first evaluate how projects and programs weredesigned and implemented to strategically achieve a sustainable outcome.

How can actors and agencies in post-conflict societies construct activities and navigate theirways through the challenges affecting locally owned peace process? What are the majorchallenges obstructing the goals for peace-building in local post-conflict societies? How canthese challenges be tackled to enable local peace process to become sustainable? These questionsare deeply motivated by the presumably failed peace-building processes in Myanmar. This thesisseeks to contribute to the feasibility of peace-building in local context. To highlight thechallenges of locally owned peace process which- are shaped by the elements of local ownership,this thesis offers a layout on which peace practitioners, policy makers and donor agencies canembed their framework for local peace operations in post-conflict societies. The existing elementof local ownership distorts reality and creates numerous challenges for post-conflict internal andexternal actors and agencies implementing peace framework. To counter the impediments oflocal ownership in post-conflict peace-building, this thesis argues for external-local ownershipand cooperation, as a means to promote and strengthen transparency of all forms of supportsnecessary to achieve sustainable peace-building goals in local post-conflict societies.