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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.