This article examines the principle of ownership of local society for peacebuilding by looking at the process of statebuilding. In so doing, the article takes the examples of Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka in order to examine different cases of post-conflict peacebuilding in light of the difficulty and complexity of the ownership of local society in relation to various types of statebuilding. The first section provides an overall framework of the relationship of the issue of ownership of local society with the statebuilding process. The article introduces the concept of "neopatrimonialism" in order to highlight the predicament of peacebuilding from the perspective of the statebuilding process. The second section looks at the case of Sierra Leone by describing its post-conflict peacebuilding as a process of creating a post-neopatrimonial liberal democracy. The case of Sierra Leone shows the possibility and difficulty of implanting liberal democracy in post-conflict society in Africa. The third section deals with the case of Sri Lanka by describing the nature of its post-conflict peacebuilding as an Asian-style developmental authoritarianism. The case of Sri Lanka shows the possibility and difficulty of developing a unified state in post-conflict society in Asia in the environment of contemporary international society. The concluding section summarizes the importance of analyzing the ownership of local society in the context of peacebuilding.