ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks the evolution in the understanding of local ownership to make two points. First, contemporary governing approaches are adopting the policy to address some of the shortcomings of liberal interventions, meeting the demands of critiques of liberal peace. The second point is that the shift in the understanding of ownership has come at a cost: self-government is gradually unthinkable. Local ownership is presented as a discourse that promises to embrace difference, but it permanently defers the equality between internationally supervised populations and the rest of sovereign nations. While in the beginning international organisations used the strategy of local ownership to redress the wrongs of top-down and externally driven approaches, processes to transfer ownership have become interminable. The aim of the policy strategy of local ownership is no longer self-determination but resolving the governance dilemma – dodging the two evils: self-determination and external control, i.e., chaos and colonialism – 'forever'.
