ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of relevant academic literature pertinent for contextualising the peacebuilding approaches of the European Union and the United States of America in the Western Balkans region, and the roles they have respectively played in providing and endorsing security and stability initiatives in the past 30 years. It examines and elaborates on the nature of their participation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo and their relationships with local actors, as well as the overall impacts of their actions on local agency and local ownership of the process. For both the EU and the US, peacebuilding was not aimed solely at post-conflict development, institutional capacity building, and governance restructuring. However, the reality in the Western Balkans region has indicated the growing dependence of local actors on external actors.
