Local ownership is a major component of what is considered best practice in contemporary peacebuilding. It seeks to reallocate authority between local and international actors in peacebuilding contexts. In its purest form, it requires that the design, implementation and evaluation of reform should be led by local actors. Therefore, under local ownership, external actors are circumscribed to a supporting role in post-conflict reconstruction. Local ownership is thus a critique of the tendency towards top-down internationally led peacebuilding reform. The primacy of local ownership is evident in its endorsement in both academic literature and policy documents. Underpinning the importance of local ownership is a set of normative claims. It is argued that local ownership produces reform that is more legitimate and sustainable, in addition to developing democratic governance as the foundation to a post-war regime. Subsequently, what scholarship on local ownership has sought to clarify is conceptual content, including the complex question of who is local. Furthermore, there have been different suggestions on how to operationalise local ownership, and more broadly how to bridge the prevailing gap between rhetoric and practice. What has not been sufficiently done is an empirical defence of these normative claims. For example, does the process of ownership actually result in the development of democratic governance? More importantly, are the outcomes of local ownership consistent with the broader liberal peacebuilding paradigm, especially the latter's democratic disposition? This gap in the literature, is the research problem driving this dissertation. This dissertation seeks to understand whether there is evidence of a positive relationship between local ownership and democratic governance within the broader liberal peacebuilding project. My guiding research question involves determining how essential local ownership is to the development of democratic governance. This relationship is explored though the lens of SSR as one of the pillars of peacebuilding. This is because the literature on local ownership has been developed most in this area. The relationship between democratic governance and SSR, specifically within the military, can be understood in terms of democratic control of the military. Democratic control is operationalised in this thesis as civilian control and oversight (executive, legislative and broader civil society). Taking this into consideration, there are two paths of investigation. Does the absence of ownership undermine democratic control of the military and does its presence develop it? Liberia and Sierra Leone are the case studies through which this question is explored. Comparatively, Liberia is meant to represent the absence of ownership while Sierra Leone demonstrates more substantive attempts at local ownership. Focusing on the reform of the military, I argue that the absence of local ownership undermined democratic governance in terms of civilian control and oversight in Liberia. The opposite is true in Sierra Leone. However, there is evidence that outcomes which develop democratic control and oversight of the military can result from activities were ownership is both present and absent. As such, local ownership of SSR is sufficient, but not necessary for the development of democratic governance within the military. That notwithstanding, local ownership is still of immense importance. Its importance resides in the production of reform that is more context specific and thus contextually relevant. Local ownership produces reform which the host country can understand and sustain, a claim that the existing literature attests to. In this way, local ownership is important in bridging the gap between the beneficiaries of security and the broader security architecture. While gains in democratic control of the military can be achieved where ownership is present or absent, the sustainability of these gains is intricately linked to local ownership. Local ownership may not be necessary for democratic governance in the military, but it is necessary for sustainable democratic governance, as well as reform rooted in contextual realities and the needs of the country undergoing reform.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/24924 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Nyamnjoh, Anye-Nkwenti |
| Contributors | Lamb, Guy |
| Publisher | University of Cape Town, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Political Studies |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, MPhil |
| Format | application/pdf |
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