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

Since the early 2000s, the "local turn" has thoroughly transformed the field of peacebuilding. The European Union (EU) policy discourse on peacebuilding has also aligned with this trend, with an increasing number of EU policy statements insisting on the importance of "the local." However, most studies on EU peacebuilding still adopt a top-down approach and focus on institutions, capabilities, and decision-making at the EU level. This special issue contributes to the literature by focusing on bottom-up and local dynamics of EU peacebuilding. After outlining the rationale and the scope of the special issue, this article discusses the local turn in international peacebuilding and identifies several interrelated concepts relevant to theorizing the role of the local, specifically those of effectiveness, ownership, and resistance. In the conclusion, we summarize the key contributions of this special issue and suggest some avenues for further research

Urban Land Market in Ghana: A Study of the Wa Municipality

This paper examines the land market in Ghana using the Wa municipality as a study area, an urban land market that is largely underdeveloped. The study employed questionnaires to collect data on how the land market in the municipality functions. It was found that this land market basically comprises undeveloped land and most of the land units are located in areas without basic infrastructure or services. Furthermore, customary land is efficiently allocated to competing uses and users. However, the market is bedevilled with problems such as multiple land sales and boundary disputes as a result of the unavailability of documentation on land transactions in the municipality. It suggests that state policy interventions, and not the institutional bureaucracy of land management, are required to address the inherent market problems