The 'light footprint' and beyond

The turn of the millennium brought a certain shift in strategy. UN administration moved away from comprehensive governance models a la Kosovo or East Timor, and returned to more moderate formulas of international administering authority. The idea of preserving local capacity and domestic decision-making choices in processes of foreign governance is by no means novel. Practices of deference to local rule were well established in the colonial practice of the nineteenth century. British administrators maintained and used certain local laws and institutional structures for the purpose of the administration of African colonies. This practice continued under the Mandate and Trusteeship Systems. Moreover, on various occasions, the UN itself decided to limit its engagement in the field of territorial administration to forms of governance assistance. However, it took some time for the principle of “local ownership” to begin to gain ground in contemporary practice. The notion of “local ownership” emerged formally in the context of economic development assistance. International organisations such as the OECD promoted the principle of “local ownership” in donor policies in the 1990s. The OECD emphasised that that “the peoples of … countries concerned must remain the ‘owners’ of their policies and programmes”, in order to achieve sustainable development and to avoid the pitfalls of donor dependency. In the field of UN administration, this idea began to gain systematic support and recognition after the experiences of Kosovo and East Timor.