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Comprehensive Security Sector Reform (SSR) has become a crucial component of many international peace- and statebuilding operations. The paper assesses the consequences of these attempts to foster international standards of ‘democratic security governance’ in the security sectors of post-conflict or fragile states. The paper builds on qualitative case study research of SSR interventions in Timor-Leste, Liberia, and the Palestinian Territories, conducted 2010–2012, to trace patterns of adoption, adaptation or rejection of international security governance standards by domestic actors. The article uses insights from sociological organization theories to identify different types of ‘hybrid security orders’ that result from encounters between international and domestic models of security governance in SSR processes.

This special issue identifies new directions in research on the consequences of international involvement in security sector reform (SSR). Both empirically and theoretically, the focus lies on the so far neglected role of local agency and domestic power constellations. The introductory article maps out different ways to analyse the external-domestic interaction dynamics that structure the often contentious and asymmetric encounters between international and local interests and demands in SSR processes. It makes the case for moving beyond a state-centric approach to the study of security governance in areas of limited statehood and for engaging more closely with the layered, mixed or hybrid security orders that can result from external engagement in domestic reform contexts.

Security sector reform (SSR), targeting security forces and their management and oversight institutions, has become a major feature of international peace- and statebuilding activities. The article draws on policy transfer research to assess substantive and procedural changes in how international actors intervene in the security governance of fragile or post-conflict states. By comparing transfer processes in Liberia, Timor-Leste and the Palestinian Territories, the article shows that despite variations across political, economic and strategic factors in each domestic context, external SSR interventions showed distinct similarities. SSR interventions expanded their substantive scope over time; less directly coercive mechanisms of persuasion and socialization increasingly replaced the direct imposition of external models of security governance; and the influence of domestic elite actors on transfer processes increased over the duration of interventions.

International interventions are an omnipresent and increasingly diverse instrument in world politics. This special issue of Cooperation and Conflict follows broader calls to ‘decentre’ the study of...

This article examines the perceptions of domestic actors in international governance and state-building interventions. To further decentre a research field that has so far focused primarily on the ...

Despite lively debates about the institutional development of the European security architecture, the larger question of the strategic aims it should serve has received less attention. This chapter serves to mitigate this lack. It asks how the EU developed its strategic choices in the security field. Comparing the emergence of both internal and external security strategies, the chapter argues that the process has been capability-driven and not strategy-led, resulting in a ‘capability–strategy’ mismatch. As a result of this strategic void at the heart of the European security project, actors within several policy arenas in the complex EU architecture have been able to develop different – and sometimes conflicting – strategic ends: counter-terrorism, human security, common defence, crime-fighting and stability. Particularly in areas where the EU's Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) and Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) agendas overlap, the chapter finds that EU actors follow diverging strategic...

Domestic and transnational criminalized activities are typical side effects of weak statehood and civil war. International actors pursue a variety of counter-crime programmes explicitly designed to strengthen the judicial, penal and law enforcement capacities of states after war. This paper traces the implementation of international counter-crime programmes in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina and asks what effects they have had so far. Drawing on implementation research in the fields of public policy and foreign policy analysis, the paper discusses the constellation of factors that influence the implementation of the international law enforcement agenda in Bosnia. While we detect an initial gap between international counter-crime strategies and their implementation on the ground, our analysis also shows that international actors have intensified their fight against organized crime in post-conflict societies. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, counter-crime implementation efforts, unsystematic and uncoordinated at first, have improved over time.