Statebuilding, Security-Sector Reform and the Liberal Peace

Statebuilding, Security-Sector Reform and the Liberal Peace PDF

Author: Barry J. Ryan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 113524474X

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This book explores how and why police reform became an international phenomenon in the era of statebuilding that followed the end of the Cold War. Police reform has become an indispensible element in the spread of liberal democracy. Policing is distinguished by its ability to combine reasonable and forcible methods to preserve and spread liberal values. The book examines the reason police reform was introduced as a method of building consensus in Latin America and the Balkans and documents the development of its use in Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus region. It illustrates how police p.

Security Sector Reform in Conflict-Affected Countries

Security Sector Reform in Conflict-Affected Countries PDF

Author: Mark Sedra

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1317390806

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This book examines the evolution, impact, and future prospects of the Security Sector Reform (SSR) model in conflict-affected countries in the context of the wider debate over the liberal peace project. Since its emergence as a concept in the late 1990s, SSR has represented a paradigm shift in security assistance, from the realist, regime-centric, train-and-equip approach of the Cold War to a new liberal, holistic and people-centred model. The rapid rise of this model, however, belied its rather meagre impact on the ground. This book critically examines the concept and its record of achievement over the past two decades, putting it into the broader context of peace-building and state-building theory and practice. It focuses attention on the most common, celebrated and complex setting for SSR, conflict-affected environments, and comparatively examines the application and impacts of donor-supported SSR programing in a series of conflict-affected countries over the past two decades, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The broader aim of the book is to better understand how the contemporary SSR model has coalesced over the past two decades and become mainstreamed in international development and security policy and practice. This provides a solid foundation to investigate the reasons for the poor performance of the model and to assess its prospects for the future. This book will be of much interest to students of international security, peacebuilding, statebuilding, development studies and IR in general.

Statebuilding and Police Reform

Statebuilding and Police Reform PDF

Author: Barry J. Ryan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1135244731

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This book explores how and why police reform became an international phenomenon in the era of statebuilding that followed the end of the Cold War. Police reform has become an indispensible element in the spread of liberal democracy. Policing is distinguished by its ability to combine reasonable and forcible methods to preserve and spread liberal values. The book examines the reason police reform was introduced as a method of building consensus in Latin America and the Balkans and documents the development of its use in Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus region. It illustrates how police power binds the liberal value of freedom to the security needs of post-conflict regions and discusses its force as a strategy to bring law and order to a global security domain. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject, the book delves deeply into policing as a method to bring coherence to global security. It traces the presence of coherent police strategies in contemporary international relations through studies of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. By contrasting police reform with security sector reform, the book explores how liberal peace is imagined by the international NGO sector, state aid agencies and international organizations. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction, critical security studies, development studies and IR in general.

Building Security in Post-Conflict States

Building Security in Post-Conflict States PDF

Author: Ursula Schroeder

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-02

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1317440013

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Support for security and justice institutions has become a crucial instrument of international engagement in fragile and conflict-affected states. In attempts to shore up security as a precondition for sustainable peace, international actors have become deeply engaged in reforming the security agencies and security governance institutions of states emerging from conflict. But despite their increasing importance in the field of international peace- and state-building, security sector reform (SSR) interventions remain both highly political and deeply contentious processes. Expanding on this theme, this edited volume identifies new directions in research on the domestic consequences of external support to security sector reform. Both empirically and theoretically, the focus lies on the so far neglected role of domestic actors, interests and political power constellations in recipient states. Based on a wide range of empirical cases, the volume discusses how the often conflictual and asymmetric encounters between external and domestic actors with divergent interests and perceptions affect the consequences of international interventions. By taking into account the plurality of state and non-state security actors and institutions beyond classical models of Weberian statehood, the contributions make the case for engaging more closely with the complexity of the domestic security governance configurations that can result from external engagement in the field of security sector reform. This book was published as a special issue of International Peacekeeping.

Building Pathways to Peace

Building Pathways to Peace PDF

Author: Nadine Ansorg

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-11-30

Total Pages: 125

ISBN-13: 1009406736

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SSR is a key element of the transitions out of war, aiming at the establishment of accountable and legitimate institutions able to prevent and sanction the use of violence. While recognizing the need to include local actors, donor policies still focus mostly on the state as a provider of security. Second generation SSR has emphasized the need to include local communities and recognize the existence of non-state actors in the provision of security and justice. However, recognition is not enough. This Element promotes a radical re-think of SSR in the context of conflict and war. Guiding question for the considerations is how can security sector reform be set up and implemented to contribute to constructive and inclusive state-society relations, and build the path to long-lasting peace? This Element argues that a focus on functional equivalents, minorities, gender, and human rights is key for the design, implementation, and success of SSR.

Building Pathways to Peace

Building Pathways to Peace PDF

Author: Nadine Ansorg

Publisher:

Published: 2023-11-29

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 100940671X

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SSR is a key element of the transitions out of war, aiming at the establishment of accountable and legitimate institutions able to prevent and sanction the use of violence. While recognizing the need to include local actors, donor policies still focus mostly on the state as a provider of security. Second generation SSR has emphasized the need to include local communities and recognize the existence of non-state actors in the provision of security and justice. However, recognition is not enough. This Element promotes a radical re-think of SSR in the context of conflict and war. Guiding question for the considerations is how can security sector reform be set up and implemented to contribute to constructive and inclusive state-society relations, and build the path to long-lasting peace? This Element argues that a focus on functional equivalents, minorities, gender, and human rights is key for the design, implementation, and success of SSR.

Rethinking the Liberal Peace

Rethinking the Liberal Peace PDF

Author: Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011-03-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1136740473

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This book presents a critical analysis of the liberal peace project and offers possible alternatives and models. In the past decade, the model used for reconstructing societies after conflicts has been based on liberal assumptions about the pacifiying effects of 'open markets' and 'open societies'. Yet, despite the vast resources invested in helping establish the precepts of this liberal peace, outcomes have left much to be desired. The book argues that failures in the liberal peace project are not only due to efficiency problems related to its adaptation in adverse local environments, but mostly due to problems of legitimacy of turning an ideal into a doctrine for action. The aim of the book is to scrutinize assumptions about the value of democratization and marketization and realities on the ground by combining theoretical discussions with empirical evidence from key post-conflict settings such as Iraq and Afghanistan. These show the disparities that exist between the ideals and the reality of the liberal peace project, as seen by external peacebuilders and domestic actors. The book then proposes various alternatives and modifications to better accommodate local perspectives, values and agency in attempts to forge a new consensus. This book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding/peacekeeping, statebuilding, war and conflict studies, international security and IR.

Co-operation, Contestation and Complexity in Peacebuilding

Co-operation, Contestation and Complexity in Peacebuilding PDF

Author: Nadine Ansorg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1000282236

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Security Sector Reform (SSR) remains a key feature of peacebuilding interventions and is usually undertaken by a state alongside national and international partners. External actors engaged in SSR tend to follow a normative agenda that often has little regard for the context in post-conflict societies. Despite recurrent criticism, SSR practices of international organisations and bilateral donors often remain focused on state institutions, and often do not sufficiently attend to alternative providers of security or existing normative frameworks of security. This edited collection explores three aspects that add an important piece to the puzzle of what constitutes effective Security Sector Reform (SSR). First, the variation of norm adoption, norm contestation and norm imposition in post-conflict countries that might explain the mixed results in terms of peacebuilding. Second, the multitude of different security actors within and beyond the state which often leads to multiple patterns of co-operation and contestation within reform programmes. Third, how both the multiplicity of and tension between norms and actors further complicate efforts to build peace or, as complexity theory would posit, influence the complex and non-linear social system that is the conflict-affected environment. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

States of Unrest

States of Unrest PDF

Author: Christopher B. Dyck

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 703

ISBN-13:

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Drawing from original interviews, archival work and extended fieldwork (2011- 2012), this doctoral dissertation comparatively examines the theory and practice of United Kingdom, United States and United Nations-led post-conflict peacebuilding and security sector reforms in Sierra Leone (2001-2011) and Liberia (2003-2013). Through an examination of specific post-conflict practices--disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration or "DDR" and security sector and military reform (SSR)--I demonstrate that these interventions were embedded within a macro-peacebuilding approach that was oriented for short-term problem-solving in support of an expedient rush to reconsolidate state authority followed by a statebuilding and capacity building process broadly in the mold of a "liberal peace". The central argument presented in the dissertation is that external actors aimed to reconsolidate state authority during the immediate phase of post-war "peacebuilding" without problematising the nature of the African state in both societies and thereby undermining the long-term effectiveness of these interventions. Despite considerable western involvement over the past decade, the structural causes that led to these conflicts have been unaddressed and continue to persist in the so-called "post-conflict" period. The long-term effects of this strategy are explored in relation to the functioning of state power and its relations with civil society.

Unravelling Liberal Interventionism

Unravelling Liberal Interventionism PDF

Author: Gëzim Visoka

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-10

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0429017936

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Despite calls for the decolonisation of knowledge, scholars who come from conflict-affected societies remained marginalised, excluded from the examination of the politics and impacts of liberal interventionism. This edited volume gives local scholars a platform from which they critically examine different aspects of liberal interventionism and statebuilding in Kosovo. Drawing on situational epistemologies and grounded approaches, the chapters in this book interrogate a wide range of themes, including: the politics of local resistance; the uneven relationship between international statebuilders and local subjects; faking of local ownership of security sector reform and the rule of law; heuristic and practical limits of interventionism, as well as the subjugated voices in statebuilding process, such as minorities and women. The book finds that the local is not antidote to the liberal, and that local perspectives are not monolithic. Yet, local critiques of statebuilding do not seek to generate replicable knowledge; rather they prefer generating situational and context-specific knowledge be that to resolve problems or uncover the unresolved problems. The book seeks to contribute to critical peace and conflict studies by (re)turning the local turn to local scholars who come from conflict-affected societies and who have themselves experienced the transition from war to peace. This book, voted one of the top 10 books of 2020 by International Affairs, is essential reading for students and scholars of peace- and state-building, conflict studies and international relations.