Effective? Locally owned? Beyond the technocratic perspective on the European Union Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories

Reclaiming the local in EU peacebuilding: Effectiveness, ownership, and resistance

“…From this vantage point, the effectiveness of peacebuilding is neither in the eye of beholder nor can it be assessed based on some objective, timeless, and decontextualized criteria. Perceptions matter, and particularly local ones, and the existing literature on peacebuilding in general, and on the EU, in particular, rarely take them seriously into consideration (but see Tartir & Ejdus, 2018;Müller & Zahda, 2018). Such an approach allows to capture both the contestedness of the notion of effectiveness and its inter-subjective, rather than purely subjective or objective character.…”

“…However, the view taken by the papers in this special issue (in particular, Tartir & Ejdus, 2018) is that effectiveness needs to be analyzed at the implementation level too. Looking at policy implementation is relevant for several reasons.…”

“…It should be noted, however, that they do not start from a single conceptual or theoretical understanding of local ownership. While some articles are adopting a problem-solving approach (Müller & Zahda, 2018), others draw on critical theory (Ejdus, 2018;Tartir & Ejdus, 2018;Juncos, 2018). For instance, Müller and Zahda (2018) show that the political nature of the EU's approach to SSR not only has an impact on its effectiveness, but it also limits the implementation of the principle of local ownership.…”

“…In a similar way, different local constituencies may (and often do) have diametrically opposite goals concerning particular interventions, so what is perceived to be effective by some groups may not be by others. For instance, Tartir and Ejdus (2018) show how assessments of effectiveness can be starkly different not only when the internal assessments are compared to external ones, but also between various layers of the latter. Thus, for instance, the EU rule of law mission can be seen as an effective mission from the point of view of the Palestinian Authority and its ability to police the West Bank, but not so much from the vantage point of the Palestinian people and their desire to break free from half a century long Israeli occupation.…”

“…Ejdus (2018) draws on Foucault's notion of political rationality to show how although coated in liberal idioms, local ownership not only in CSDP interventions but in peacebuilding more generally, is driven by the rationality of interveners (not the locals) and operationalized through a technology of responsibilization for externally designed objectives. By asking "whose ownership" is sought in EU interventions, Tartir and Ejdus (2018) foreground silenced, marginalized, and even oppressed voices and perspectives in the case of Palestine. In sum, the articles in this special issue bring to bear the diversity of views on local ownership to shed light on a novel empirical material, but also contribute to further theorization of local ownership in EU peacebuilding.…”