CIAO DATE: 05/2011
Volume: 7, Issue: 2
November 2009
Security & Justice Development – What Next? (PDF)
Andrew Rathmell
The development of local security and justice sectors in developing, fragile and conflict-affected states has for a long time been an important strand in the UK’s approach to delivering its national security and development objectives. The 2009 White Paper on international development committed DFID to placing considerably greater emphasis on promoting security and access to justice in developing states. The Ministry of Defence’s Green Paper is likely to place greater emphasis on soft power, including security cooperation activities. In some countries, the UK has poured bilateral resources into this domain, from the training of Afghan military and police to the reform of the Sierra Leone security sector and the strengthening of various African militaries and police forces. DFID’s White Paper commitments come 10 years after then DFID Secretary of State Clare Short took the bold step of putting Security Sector Reform (SSR) squarely on the development agenda. In the interim, the UK has taken a leading role in undertaking SSR-related projects in its bilateral programmes and in shaping the international donor debate. The success of international lobbying by the UK has been reflected in documents such as the OECD DAC’s guidelines on SSR and the UN’s adoption of the concept. While security and justice is unlikely to become a Millenium Development goal, the fact that it is discussed as such is a tribute to the progress that this agenda has made. The UK’s recent (re)commitment to the security and justice agenda is a worthy enterprise. However, achieving success will require three things: further conceptual clarity, a revamped international influence campaign, and addressing serious capacity constraints on the delivery side.
Civil-Military Relations: Is there really a problem? (PDF)
David Chuter
The author has argued in a previous article that Security Sector Reform (SSR) is essentially a melange of Anglo-Saxon Civil-Military Relations (CMR) theory and the traditional dim view of the military usually held by those in the development sector. 1 This article, treats the first component in more detail, since the main theoretical assumptions of SSR about the security sector, the place of the military, and so forth, are essentially dependent on the validity of certain propositions advanced by CMR theorists in the past. Thus, if these propositions are shown to be false, or even incomplete, then there must be important reservations about the validity of much SSR thinking, not to mention practice. It is, indeed, the element of practice which is especially important here, because, unlike CMR which was essentially descriptive, SSR is overtly prescriptive. A theory which describes reality incorrectly or incompletely is unfortunate, but that a doctrine which prescribes action on the basis of a fallacious theory is positively dangerous. The logic of this article is straightforward. Theoretical and prescriptive writing about SSR is heavily influenced by the vocabulary and concepts of CMR theory. That CMR theory is acknowledged by all not to be pragmatically based on the analysis of case studies, but on inductive political reasoning, from a long liberal political tradition. Analysis of a number of well-known cases of supposed military intervention demonstrate a picture which is both more complex and varied than that normally found in CMR literature, and which also fails to conform to some of that theory’s major assumptions. To the extent that SSR theory is based on the theories of CMR, therefore, its intellectual underpinnings are in jeopardy. This article seeks to do three things: first to describe and try to account for the rise of CMR theory, and note its inherent limitations and weaknesses; then look at some of the implications of this theory, and at what would have to be true in the real world for it to be correct; finally, to show, by reference to a few well-known historical examples, that the assumptions that the theory makes about the real world are inaccurate.
Application of Principal-Agent Theory to Security Sector Reform (PDF)
James Cohen
The goal of this paper is to propose principal-agent theory (PAT), a methodology adapted from economics to analyse the relations of a buyer and a seller, as a possible tool for an SSR practitioners’ assessment toolbox. The added value of PAT is its capacity to analyse the relationships between actors of the security sector based on observable, measurable and tangible mechanisms that the actors utilise in controlling, resisting, and allying with other actors. This capacity to analyse these relations has been sought out in both academic critiques of SSR and from practitioners themselves. This paper is an initial proposal on the added value of PAT, in addition to demonstrating how it could be used, gaps are also identified on how to potentially take this tool forward to aid the SSR community.