State Building in Post Conflict Rwanda: Popular Participation of Citizen in Local Conflict Mitigation

Abstract

When studying local state building this article addresses the questions how does state led conflict mitigation in post conflict Rwanda work? How is it experienced by the citizens in terms of participation, accountability and local state legitimacy? Theoretically, the study engages with literature on state-building, state society relations and local conflict mitigation. The study’s findings have indicated that the citizens’ contribution to local state-building was still modest due to low motivation among the citizens involved in the conflict mitigation process due to insufficient resources and infrastructure in the conflict mitigation process, despite the fact that the state has granted legal authority. Another important finding is that heterogeneity of conflicts is an important factor in the understanding of local-level conflicts, and especially in relation to local-level state building. Hence, it focuses on the local perspective of state building, which has mainly been studied as a top-down affair.