A brief conceptual discussion on the limitations and alternatives of security sector reforms
Alessandra Jungs de Almeida
Source: UNMISS MEDIA (a Creative Commons open access image, available at: https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/c412555d-4141-4718-8285-54cdbeabaee3).
Abstract: Peace is a process. Among the possibilities in this process, there is the security sector reform (SSR). In these debates, some criticisms of SSR programs emerge, as well as alternatives suggested by the academic literature, which I discuss below.
In a conflict scenario, peace is a process. This is what authors dedicated to post-conflict research claim (Ramsbotham, 2005; Lederach, 1999; Stedman, 2003). During the implementation of an agreement, peace is also fragile, takes time, and requires adaptation and flexibility for implementation (Stedman, 2003). Lederach (1999), for instance, argues that conflicts are a progression and that peacebuilding is a process built by various functions and roles; the author (Lederach, 1999) claims that conflicts change and move over time, which means that peace is also about the entire society and not only a specific place and time. This comprehensive vision encourages debates about what are the activities, actors, and roles to support such a process. One of the discussions in this process is whether conflicting parties agree on what the implementation of peace will involve (Stedman, 2003). Among the possibilities in an agreement, there is the security sector reform (SSR), which, in the context of International Relations, has been implemented since the 1990s in countries that have gone through conflict or authoritarian regimes. Specifically, SSR is perceived by the international community as an important process for political stability and also for the democratization of countries in transformation (Sedra, 2017). It is in these debates that some criticisms of SSR programs emerge, as well as alternatives suggested by the academic literature, which I discuss below.
Limitations for security sector reforms
One of the criticisms regarding SSR processes is that usually, in post-conflict contexts even if there are prominent local actors (e.g. rebel groups or community security), there is a focus on effectiveness rather than on conflict transformation. According to Sedra (2017), the division between what is predicted and what is found on the ground prevents the accountability of security institutions, especially where there are no previously established Westphalian state structures. In such cases, donors lack the political will to engage with non-Westphalian or local institutions (Sedra, 2017). Sedra (2017) also states that SSR processes have failed to engage with different people’s perceptions of what security means. This is a limitation because there may be the maintenance of an SSR that fails to engage with realities on the ground. In agreement with Sedra, Paul Jackson (2018) argues that there is a need to develop the capacities of local institutions and that SSRs have developed technocratic approaches, focusing on experts and effectiveness rather than developing the democratic process and transformation.
Bagayoko et al (2016) also argue that SSR is often intangible in the territory and everyday life. Postcolonial states, where many of the current post-conflict interventions with SSR programs take place, are characterized by the rule of non-state intermediaries, which compensate for the lack of a central authority that usually has the capacity to deliver essential services. However, SSRs have focused on formal arrangements from the state and security and justice institutions, which is intangible and difficult to implement in societies such as those mentioned (ibid.).
Furthermore, another criticism is that most of the time states are understood as if they had no history before the war. For instance, Millar (2013) states that an initial failure concerning peacebuilding was an understanding that states were blank slates, without considering how traditional or indigenous connections, for example, impact peace operations. Millar (2013) also argues that nowadays peace operations have been considering these failures. However, the general model is still the same. There is usually rhetoric of sensitivity to local actors and tolerance of difference (Richmond, MacGinty, 2015), but in practice, there is a gap between the theory and what happens on the ground (Chanaa, 2002).
Finally, a failure for SSR programs is when actors in the peace process do not consider the provision for long-term public security in the peace agreement. Authors such as Hutchful (2009) demonstrate that peace agreements are a gateway to SSR processes. However, there is no consistency in how SSR provisions are found in peace agreements, which leads to limited results for the peace process and its implementation in post-conflict reality (ibid.). According to 18 peace agreements analyzed by Call and Stanley (2003), public security issues, in the long term, are difficult to be implemented if they are not foreseen directly in the peace agreements.
Alternatives for security sector reforms suggested by the literature
Among the alternatives suggested to overpass SSR failures, one of them is to be attentive to existing state structures during the peace process. From a historical perspective on state formation, Egnell and Haldén (2009) argue that it is important to consider the political structures of states where the SSR will take place. In agreement, Mark Sedra (2017) places the need for experts to explore unorthodox ideas, including engagement with non-state structures and the development of hybrid approaches, considering local-liberal relations. In a nutshell, hybridism is a political configuration in which institutions with distinct configurations — formal, informal, indigenous, traditional, and/or international — cooperate, intertwine, and/or overlap. In relation to this discussion, for Sedra (2017) SSRs are more feasible in states that have Weberian structures, political consensus, and some liberal tradition.
In addition, hybridism and the mediation of difference have the potential to strengthen the peacebuilding process. Even if Bagayoko et al (2016) recognize that hybridity cannot be assumed as a viable alternative to state security provision, they argue that security beyond the state has the potential to strengthen the peace process and that hybridity can be understood as a place of innovation, of creating new types of legitimacy and authority. In agreement, Millar (2013) perceives hybridity as a proposal for hegemonic liberal peace that can contribute to peacebuilding. Furthermore, hybridism can transcend Weberian notions about the SSR with a “bottom-up” lens, often ignored by IR (Richmond and MacGinty, 2015). Conceptually, hybridism frees us from the rigidity of standard and binary categories and the dominant script between “good” and “bad”, “state” and “non-state”, “western” and “non-western” (Richmond and MacGinty, 2015). For them (ibid.) the implication of hybrid peace is that the mediation of difference in peacebuilding is necessary.
Concluding, it is also important when long-term public security is foreseen in the peace agreement. Call and Stanley (2003) state that reducing the size and authority of military forces, combined with strengthening civil police institutions, has moderate success in the 18 cases analyzed by them. This happens because, in the absence of conflict, the police is more likely to affect average citizens than military troops. However, the chance of the police being reformed is greater if it was foreseen in the agreement (ibid.).
Conclusion and proposals for security sector reform practices and literature
Studies on security sector reform point to a second-generation moment that, contrary to the clarity of first-generation literature and policies, does not have a map and is not linear (Jackson, 2018; Sedra, 2018). In such debates, academics recognize the need to develop new solutions for peacebuilding (Jackson, 2018). In addition to recognizing the limitations of SSR programs and studies on the reality on the ground, conceptually the discussions could draw from other disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, and even pedagogy. For example, debates in critical pedagogy (Franco, 2016), derived from Freirean thinking, recognize the concept of “complexity” in pedagogical practices. This concept goes beyond the technique of teachers but is the result of a process of expectations and encounters. Similar to SSR second-generation literature, this complex approach in pedagogy considers social realities and specific cultures, and not just formal training. For Franco (2016), linearity does not fit in educational processes. Beyond its complexity and, with debates more advanced than the second-generation studies of SSR, critical pedagogy points a way: the necessary intentionality in the articulation of the expectations of the group involved. At school, this means that the teacher, alone, does not transform the classroom (Franco, 2016); for SSR, an area that could apply these studies, practitioners are in an oscillating, contradictory, and renewing environment in which the new will emerge anyway. What kind of new will emerge depends, according to critical pedagogy, on the intentionality of the proposed practices and not on a technical or mechanical action that disregards the construction of the human in the process (ibid.). This discussion, in another hand, is strongly correlated with the International Relations literature about social engineering in state formation processes (Egnell, Halden, 2009).
References
Bagayoko, N., Hutchful, E., & Luckham, R. (2016). Hybrid security governance in Africa: rethinking the foundations of security, justice and legitimate public authority. Conflict, Security & Development, 16(1), 1–32.
Call, Charles, Stanley, William. Military and Police Reform after Civil Wars. In: Darby, J. et al. (eds.). Contemporary Peacemaking. Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Cap. 18 (pp. 212–223).
Chanaa, Jane. Security Sector Reform: Issues, Challenges and Prospects. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Egnell, Robert; Haldén, Peter. Laudable, ahistorical and overambitious: security sector reform meets state formation theory. Conflict, Security & Development, vol. 9, n. 1, pp. 27–54, 2009.
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Mac Ginty, R., Richmond, O. (2015). The fallacy of constructing hybrid political orders: a reappraisal of the hybrid turn in peacebuilding. International Peacekeeping, 23(2), 219–239.
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Alessandra Jungs de Almeida is a Ph.D. student in International Relations at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) I Alessandra Jungs de Almeida é doutoranda em Relaçōes Internacionais na Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC).