ABSTRACT
External statebuilding interventions in postwar societies have a common denominator: they all aim at building functioning and self-sustaining state structures, which would, at a later stage, allow external statebuilders to complete their mission and to withdraw from that country, making their capacities available for other regions in the world. From a global or international perspective, this is the main reason why local ownership in statebuilding processes matters. Without a successful handover of control and competencies from external statebuilders to local actors following a period of international involvement, statebuilding missions would either become open-ended and extraordinarily costly, or the missions would come to a sudden end without generating sustainable and self-sustaining local structures.1
