This chapter investigates local interactions, emphasizing the need to ground peace in the everyday lives of the population to make peacebuilding relevant. Conceptualized as a peacebuilding function, local interactions emphasize participation, influence and fostering trust towards the local government or trust between local communities. The interactions analysed in this chapter are those that occur between local inhabitants, directly or through civil society actors, and the Lebanese municipalities of Tyre, Bourj Hammoud and Saida. In this chapter, municipal councillors, municipal employees or civil society actors offer their views on how interactions are pursued. Through their perceptions, interactions are analysed, furthering our understanding of local interactions and how they relate to the role of local governments in local peacebuilding.

In particular, this chapter investigates how inhabitants interact with the municipality through the constellation of the municipal council and municipal council interaction, as well as how the municipality interacts with the population as a local authority in situations where the municipality issues permits and ensures that they are followed or provides services to the population. Interactions through the constellation of the municipal council offer opportunities to analyse municipal councils as collective decision-making bodies (Sisk and Risley, 2005a). Furthermore, analysing local interactions when the municipality exercises authority or provides services allows for an analysis of continuous practices and negotiations over participation, influence and trust-building. Following the discussion of local interactions in each municipality, the three cases are discussed together, highlighting how interactions are perceived as well as how these interactions relate to local government engagement in local peacebuilding.

Tyre

Tyre is a city with diversity at its heart. Interviewees described the city as easy-going (Int. 49, civil society actor, December 2015), where people were friends and brothers across religious communities (Int. 48, civil society actor, December 2015), which sometimes resulted in marriages across sects (Int. 6, municipal councillor, June 2015). Although the municipality was not perceived as the main actor in promoting a good relationship between religious communities, the municipality was perceived as inclusive towards the different communities.