Building a liberal-local hybrid peace and state in Bougainville

There has been an increasing attempt to theorise the emergence of a liberal-local hybrid approach to state-building, which recognises the coexistence and interaction of liberal and local socio-political institutions. There has not yet been a sustained attempt to understand what occurs when a liberal-local approach is adopted from the outset of a state-building operation. This article seeks to fill this gap by applying the literature to the state-building process in Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea.