This chapter analyses service delivery as a peacebuilding function. In theory, providing for local needs is central to local legitimacy, which promotes stability and peace. When service delivery provides for local needs, the state is perceived as responsive and therefore, uncontested as a legitimate power (Roberts, 2011b). However, for service delivery to provide a peacebuilding function it should be responsive, inclusive, capable and promote an idea of economic development. Throughout the chapter, the perceptions of municipal councillors, municipal employees and civil society actors in the municipalities of Tyre, Bourj Hammoud and Saida further our understanding of service delivery as part of the municipality's role in local peacebuilding.

The services analysed include waste management, infrastructural developments and the provision for everyday needs. These are not the only services provided by the three municipalities, nor are they solely provided by municipalities. Instead, these are illustrations of the complexities involved in local service delivery and what that means for service delivery as a peacebuilding function. As we will see, services providing waste management may promote an image of the municipality as responsive and capable and therefore, locally legitimate, whereas the lack of management, or inadequate management, spurs discontent. In addition, infrastructural developments serve to illustrate the idea of economic development, or how the belief that changes on the ground improve economic opportunities for the local population, but where responsiveness, inclusiveness and capacity may look different, depending on the context or collaborations enabling infrastructural projects. Furthermore, service delivery related to social needs may be responsive but not necessarily inclusive nor portray an image of a capable local government. The chapter suggests that how service delivery is performed matters for how it is perceived by municipal representatives and local stakeholders, influencing the municipality's engagement with local peacebuilding and the type of peace built.

Tyre

On a daily basis, municipal employees empty refuse bins on the streets and transport the waste to the waste treatment plant in Ain el-Baal, built to treat waste from all 63 towns and villages in the district of Tyre (Tyre Caza). However, the plant, built to treat 120 tonnes of waste daily, cannot treat the 300 tonnes of waste produced daily in the district. As explained by one interviewee: “In Caza of Tyre, we have one place in Ain el-Baal. … But this place was wrong, because we have 63 villages in Caza of Tyre.