Introduction

International peacebuilding carries the liberal peace assumption that democratic values and standards in security, justice, and development can build and sustain peace in post-conflict societies. The imperfect record of past peacebuilding missions, however, led to the perception that liberal peace is in crisis. The local turn is a response to this crisis with the aim of rectifying the top-down, Western-centric, and standardized approaches of international peacebuilding. It advocates for bottom-up, locally contextually, and inclusionary practices in rebuilding post-conflict societies. These peacebuilding trajectories amidst the known risks of conflict relapse in societies transitioning to peace prompt a timely and relevant question to which answers have implications to the way the United Nations (UN) and the rest of the international community conduct peacebuilding: Can the local turn save peacebuilding? The Introduction lays out the plan of the book on answering this question and provides a background of the case studies of UN transitional administrations in Cambodia, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste.