The notion of "local ownership" has emerged in recent years as part of the contemporary commonsense of security sector reform (SSR). While the argument that externally driven reform processes are unsustainable is now widely accepted, the principle of local ownership has proven difficult to both define and operationalise. With contributions by leading practitioners, both "insiders" and "outsiders", Local Ownership and Security Sector Reform subjects the broader issue of local ownership to critical scrutiny, furthers the debate on what local ownership is and why it matters, and explores how ownership issues have played out in the context of specific SSR case studies.