ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the apparent paradox in contemporary democratisation and post-conflict settings of a growing commitment to promote local ownership and the reluctance to grant self-government to war-affected populations. Local ownership increasingly understood by most policy reports and the academic literature as a learning relationship, cultural exchange or reflexive cooperation between donors and recipients. Chesterman argued that ownership is certainly the intended end of such operations, but almost by definition it is not the means. In contrast to this approach in which ownership was the end of the process that justified other externally driven means, now ownership is increasingly understood to be the means of the peacebuilding process. Local ownership has become the means of a process in which the outcome is constantly adjourned. Even if ownership has become a sine qua non principle for any peacebuilding process, this has not been translated into de facto self-determination or self-government.
