Nadine Ansorg

Security sector reform in Africa: donor approaches versus local needs

ABSTRACT Many African states have security sector reform (SSR) programs. These are often internationally funded. But how do such programs account for previously existing security institutions and the security needs of local communities? This article examines SSR all over Africa to assess local ownership and path dependency from a New Institutionalist perspective. It finds that SSR, particularly in post-conflict countries, tends to be driven by ideas and perceptions of international donors promoting generalized blueprints. Often, such programs only account in a very limited way for path-dependent aspects of security institutions or the local context. Hence, the reforms often lack local participation and are thus not accepted by the local community eventually.

Wars without borders: Conditions for the development of regional conflict systems in sub-Saharan Africa

How and under what conditions does war spread into regions and do regional conflict systems evolve? These systems are defined as geographically bound spaces of insecurity, ones that are characterized by interdependent armed conflicts in which a plurality of actors who concur and/or interact within complex networks, and on different levels of action, participate. The regionalization of armed conflict is conceptualized as either the geographical diffusion to a new territory or as the escalation of violence within the very same territory, with the involvement therein of a multiplicity of actors. The processes of diffusion and escalation of civil war in potential and existent regional conflict systems in sub-Saharan Africa between 1989 and 2010 are analyzed with the help of a multivalue Qualitative Comparative Analysis (mvQCA). By using such a QCA, it is possible to compare several different cases and produce results that go beyond the ones thus far discovered from small-N analyses. By comparing 12 cases it is also possible to identify the causal relationships and interactions between variables. The analysis shows that, in the cases compared, four specific conditions lead to a regional spread of violence: economic networks sustained through the support of neighboring countries; an intervention on the part of the government; militarized refugees; and, non-salient regional identity groups.

Gender and the EU's Support for Security Sector Reform in Fragile Contexts

How does the European Union (EU) include ‘gender’ within its support to security sector reform (SSR) programmes? The EU has committed to include gender perspectives by implementing the Women, Peace and Security agenda (WPS) within its foreign security practices. While researchers and practitioners recognise the importance of integrating gender issues into SSR operational effectiveness, there is limited knowledge about how this functions within the EUs security architecture. This article uses Feminist Institutionalism (FI) to understand the process of gender mainstreaming within the EUs support to SSR programmes. It does this by using two crucial theory†testing cases of SSR programmes – Ukraine and Afghanistan. It finds that the EUs ability to promote gender inclusive approaches to SSR is limited by the structure of the EUs own assumptions and capabilities, and institutional constraints in third countries. At the same time, the cases underscore the importance of individuals as agents of change.

Police reforms in peace agreements, 1975-2011: introducing the PRPA dataset

This article presents new data on provisions for police reform in peace agreements (PRPA) between 1975 and 2011. The PRPA dataset complements past research on the determinants and effects of specific terms in agreements with detailed data on police reform provisions. The PRPA dataset also adds a quantitative dimension to the thus far largely qualitative literature on post-conflict security sector reform (SSR). It includes information on six subtypes of police reform: capacity, training, human rights standards, accountability, force composition and international training and monitoring. We show that there is currently a high global demand for the regulation of police reform through peace agreements: police reform provisions are now more regularly included in agreements than settlement terms that call for power-sharing or elections. We observe interesting variations in the inclusion of police reform provisions in relation to past human rights violations, regime type, or the scope of international peacekeeping prior to negotiations, and illustrate the implications of police reform provisions for the duration of post-conflict peace. Finally, we stimulate ideas on how scholars and policymakers can use the PRPA dataset in future to study new questions on post-conflict police reform.

BOOK REVIEW: Peacebuilding and spatial transformation: Peace, space and place

Sierra Leone reveals that local actors are already deploying a multitude of variegated approaches to peacebuilding based on their socio-cultural practices, which constitute a form of resistance to the internationally imposed orthodoxy of pursuing peace. Tom argues that to enable and empower these multiple authorities to gain currency, it is necessary to advance a ‘post-liberal’ peace agenda that actively embraces forms of hybridity, and that facilitates engagement with socio-cultural norms and institutions to promote peace (p. 111). He cogently discusses the emergence and importance of hybrid forms of peacebuilding processes in post-war Sierra Leone, driven by the agency of local actors. These forms of hybridity can play a function that is at once emancipatory and transformative of society. Tom’s book is timely, given the global upheavals that are contributing towards the fragmentation and disruption of the liberal orthodoxy that has, during its ignoble and illegitimate reign of the past two decades, had a straitjacket effect on peacebuilding processes in Africa. Consequently, Tom’s scholarship is a necessary antidote to the doyens of Eurocentric liberal ideology who continue to ply the trade of ‘international peacebuilding’ through institutions such as the United Nations, European Union, development agencies and non-governmental organisations based in the global North. African-based non-governmental and continental intergovernmental organisations are not necessarily immune to the disease of international liberal peacebuilding, as they have also tended to uncritically imbibe this Western peace agenda and replicate the same forms of marginalisation and exclusion of local actors in the course of their work. A key message conveyed throughout the book is that local agency is a fundamental prerequisite upon which ‘self-sustaining peace’ can be consolidated within societies in Africa and elsewhere around the world. As the liberal international order begins its long descent to irrelevance, it should not be replaced by other increasingly authoritarian systems of control and dominion; rather, as this book illustrates, there is an alternative path, which emphasises hybrid forms of authority and the localisation of agency, particularly for the peacebuilding processes that are necessary for the self-sustenance of societies. On this account, Liberal Peace and Post-conflict Peacebuilding in Africa is a necessary wake-up call and palliative to the tendency – particularly among the self-righteous and proselytising peacebuilders from the global North – to replicate the dated prescriptions of a moribund and anachronistic liberal peace agenda.

Better peacekeepers, better protection? Troop quality of United Nations peace operations and violence against civilians

Why do similarly sized peacekeeping missions vary in their effectiveness to protect civilians in conflicts? We argue that peace operations with a large share of troops from countries with high-quality militaries are better able to deter violence from state and non-state actors and create buffer zones within conflict areas, can better reach remote locations, and have superior capabilities – including diplomatic pressure by troop contributing countries – to monitor the implementation of peace agreements. These operational advantages enable them to better protect civilians. Combining data from military expenditures of troop contributing countries together with monthly data on the composition of peace operations, we create a proxy indicator for the average troop quality of UN PKOs. Statistical evidence from an extended sample of conflicts in Africa and Asia between 1991 and 2010 supports our argument.

Veto Players in Post-Conflict DDR Programs: Evidence From Nepal and the DRC

ABSTRACT Under what conditions are Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programs successfully implemented following intrastate conflict? Previous research is dominated by under-theorized case studies that lack the ability to detect the precise factors and mechanisms that lead to successful DDR. In this article, we draw on game theory and ask how the number of veto players, their policy distance, and their internal cohesion impact DDR implementation. Using empirical evidence from Nepal and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we show that the number of veto players, rather than their distance and cohesion, explains the (lack of) implementation of DDR.

Institutional Reforms and Peacebuilding: Change, Path-Dependency and Societal Divisions in Post-War Communities

This book deals with the question how institutional reform can contribute to peacebuilding in post-war and divided societies. In the context of armed conflict and widespread violence, two important questions shape political agendas inside and outside the affected societies: How can we stop the violence? And how can we prevent its recurrence? Comprehensive negotiated war terminations and peace accords recommend a set of mechanisms to bring an end to war and establish peace, including institutional reforms that promote democratization and state building. Although the role of institutions is widely recognized, their specific effects are highly contested in research as well as in practice. This book highlights the necessity to include path-dependency, pre-conflict institutions and societal divisions to understand the patterns of institutional change in post-war societies and the ongoing risk of civil war recurrence. It focuses on the general question of how institutional reform contributes to the establishment of peace in post-war societies. This book comprises three separate but interrelated parts on the relation between institutions and societal divisions, on institutional reform and on security sector reform. The chapters contribute to the understanding of the relationship between societal cleavages, pre-conflict institutions, path dependency, and institutional reform.

Kriege ohne Grenzen: Ursachen regionaler Konfliktsysteme in Sub-Sahara Afrika

?In den letzten Jahrzehnten ist ein Wandel im Kriegsgeschehen zu verzeichnen, der sich auch auf die Kriegsforschung auswirkt. Prozesse der staatlichen Entgrenzung und Denationalisierung fuhrten zu neuen Formen der Kriegsfuhrung. Damit verbunden sind auch eine Regionalisierung und Transnationalisierung von Krieg und die Entstehung von regionalen Konfliktsystemen. Diese sind gekennzeichnet durch interdependente gewaltsame Konflikte unter Beteiligung unterschiedlicher Akteure, die auf verschiedenen Handlungsebenen aufgrund von gegensatzlichen Interessen miteinander konkurrieren und/oder in komplexen Netzwerken miteinander interagieren. Das Phanomen der regionalen Konfliktsysteme wurde bislang jedoch nur unzureichend theoretisch erfasst und nur vereinzelt empirisch erforscht. Dieses Forschungsdesiderat ist der Ausgangspunkt fur die Untersuchung. Sie ist geleitet von zwei zentralen, interdependenten Forschungsfragen: Welche strukturellen Rahmenbedingungen ermoglichen das Auftreten regionaler Konfliktsysteme und der daran beteiligten Gewaltakteure? Auf Grundlage dieser Erkenntnisse untersucht die Autorin, welche Faktoren zu einer tatsachlichen Ausbreitung kriegerischer Gewalt in Regionen fuhren. In diesem Zusammenhang werden auch die Gewaltdynamiken und die Interaktionen der Akteure sowie die Motive und Intentionen ihres Handelns betrachtet. Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen wird ein theoretisches Konzept auf sozialkonstruktivistischer Basis entwickelt, das die bisherigen theoretischen Schwachen im Umgang mit regionalen Konfliktsystemen ausgleicht. Von besonderer Bedeutung sind das Zusammenspiel von Konflikt, Region und Sicherheit und die daraus resultierende Offnung der methodologischen wie auch der Akteursperspektive. Das theoretische Konzept der regionalen Konfliktsysteme wird mit Hilfe einer multi-Value Qualitative Comparative Analysis (mvQCA) anhand der Kriege mit regionaler Komponente in Sub-Sahara Afrika seit dem Ende des Kalten Krieges getestet.